The Return of Kavin (6 page)

Occasionally, Hugon thought he saw movements among the rocks, and his hand shifted toward his sword; but none of the gray Things showed themselves. Thuramon still carried the rod on his shoulder as he marched.

The sun had almost reached the sea’s rim as they came down the road toward the beach. They were weary, now. Hugon had an arm supporting Gwynna, who limped but refused to let her load be carried by Hugon. Her face was set and white, but she had uttered no word of complaint.

The boat
lay
, drawn high on the beach, not far from the road’s end. Hugon, seeing it, realized that they might have seen it on their earlier passing had they gone but a few paces further. And those two poor sods might still be alive, he thought, wryly. But then, of course, Thuramon would have been left here. Not that the old warlock couldn’t take fine care of himself, though.

It was a common fisherman’s boat, high prowed, with a single mast; the painted eye was on either side, a custom of Meryon fisher folk.

“I’d have expected something more… well, stately,” Hugon said, as they came wearily across the sand toward the boat. Thuramon chuckled, and put his burden over the side, tenderly; he did the same with the other loads, one by one. Then he clambered up and over the side; leaned over, extending his hands to Gwynna.

“Up, lass,” he said, grasping her wrists. “Now, you two, heave away.”

Zamor and Hugon leaned against the prow and thrust; the boat slid down the sand, till they waded in water. The two men grasped the gunwales and swung up into the boat, and now she lifted on the first wave, rocking.

“Oars?”
Hugon said, glancing around. Thuramon shook his head.

“No need,” he said, and leaned over the prow, muttering. The boat swung seaward and out, taking the deeper swells as if there were oars pulling… but there were none.

“Now, the sail,” Thuramon told the two men, and they helped him lift the triangular sheet, bracing it up. The evening wind took it, and the boat slanted away into the twilight. Thuramon dropped a steering oar over and sat down, holding it.

“You’ll find food there, in the forepeak,” the warlock said in a tired voice. “I… am not hungry, but you most certainly are.”

“Damn me, yes!” Zamor said, and moved forward to rummage. Gwynna yawned and settled herself in a fold of sailcloth. She stared at Hugon, and said, “You may bring me something, please. Whatever there is…” and she yawned again.

Hugon awoke, feeling the gentle sway of the boat and the sun’s warmth on his face. From the height of the sun, it was late morning already; he sat up stiffly and stretched.

“Aho, brother,” Zamor’s voice came from aft. “Last awake, then?”

Zamor sat at the steering oar, relaxed and grinning. At the fore end of the boat Gwynna knelt, carefully washing her face in a small pannikin, working away with the neatness of a cat. Beside Zamor, the warlock lay curled in a blanket, snoring.

“East by north, the old man said,” Zamor told Hugon.
“Before he went off to sleep.
Says we’ll sight land before tomorrow noon, with any luck.”

Hugon moved stiffly, coming to sit beside Zamor. He glanced down at the snoring figure. “What land?” he asked.

“Called it the Grassy Land, and said we’re not to go in there,” Zamor said. “But from there, it’s only a bit farther
to
where he wants to go. Koremon, he says.”

“Koremon!”
Hugon sat up. “I’ve heard much of that land, but never gone there. You heard the old man speak of that ancestor of mine, Kavin… he was its first king. The folk that went there came from Dorada, fleeing some sort of pestilence, then…” Hugon paused, and looked around the boat. “Where’s that dragonet?
Still with us?”

“Eee!”
The voice came from overhead. Hugon looked up, to see the creature wheeling above the mast. It cried out again, and swooped in beside him.

“I catch fish!” Fraak said, triumphantly. His long tongue flicked out, delicately cleaning silver scales from his whiskers.

“You like fish, do you?” Hugon asked, grinning down at Fraak

“Like
fish!” Fraak declared. “In cage, they make me eat dead meat.
Pfff!”
He made a disgusted sound. “Like
live
meat. Especially fish.” He curled his tail around himself and relaxed.

“He’s been sleeping since dawn,” Zamor said, indicating Thuramon. “A man of his age needs sleep…”

The warlock opened a bright eye and fixed it on the big man.

“If you knew my age, you would be surprised,” he said, and sat up, fully awake.

In the bows, Gwynna had completed her toilet, and turned to look toward the men. She studied them a moment, then came aft, moving with surefooted grace and looking completely rested.

“I see a cooking stone, there where I was,” she said, looking from Hugon to Zamor. “And there is food to be prepared.” She smiled, cool and composed. “Surely one of you can prepare some sort of breakfast?”

Hugon looked at her thoughtfully, and rubbed his chin. Zamor looked at the sky and chuckled, deep in his throat, and Thuramon turned his head to study the stern-post with deep interest.

“My lady, there’s something you seem to forget,” Hugon said, slowly. “We are no longer aboard the galley.” He stood up and braced himself against the boat’s roll, spread-legged. His eyes fixed on her green ones, holding them. “You, now… till I find a proper buyer, you’re… should we say, in my custody? Now, I find the idea of having service done me very appealing. I’ve never been able to afford it before.”

“You unutterable…” Gwynna began, her eyes blazing.

“Ah, ah!”
Hugon rifted a hand. “If it’s unutterable, don’t utter it. Now…” He smiled, benevolently. “All of us require breakfast. Knowing your lack of experience, I shall forgive small errors in your work… but not sulkiness.” He stared at her.
“Breakfast, girl.
Now!”

“You…” she almost stuttered in her rage. “You’d dare to order me…”

He moved a step closer, and looked into her furious face, his eyes coldly certain.

“If you refuse, girl, I’ll lay my swordbelt across your pretty rear till you’ll not sit for a week,” Hugon said without raising his voice. “Go now.”

“You wouldn’t dare…” she began, and saw his eyes.

“You… would,” she said in a low voice, and turned to move slowly forward to the cookstone.

The wind held, not a strong one, but steady. The boat forged on, and the sea was a smooth swell under her keel.

Gwynna had done very well about the breakfast, though she had worked with an expression that implied much.

“I think she’d have gladly poisoned us all,” Zamor muttered to Hugon; they sat, picking the last of the breakfast from their wooden bowls. Beside them, Thuramon was delving among the strange items of his cargo, crooning to himself; Gwynna sat, far in the bows, her back turned regally.

“Why, the girl’s got the hand of a fine cook indeed,” Hugon answered, lifting an eyebrow. “Look you, if we can’t sell her for a decent price, we’d do well to keep her by us. Why, one of us could marry her, perhaps.”

“It was yourself warned
me
concerning widows,” Zamor told him. “You’d not live any longer than it took that wench to find a suitable potion… unless she preferred to find some more painful way, considering how she looked at you.”

“Well, then, wed her yourself,” Hugon suggested.

“If ever I find my way back to Numori land, I’ve three good wives there already,” Zamor said. “Or I did, at any rate.” He sighed, “No Numori lass would stay unwed all the time I’ve been away. But I doubt I could get used to that queer color… no offense, brother, but in a woman… no. And she’s most unhealthily lean, too, for my taste.” He leaned on the steering oar and looked gloomy. “As long as I’ve had to do without a pair of busy thighs, though, almost anything would seem good.”

Thuramon glanced up from his business and grinned.

“We’ll land at Koremon’s port, called Drakona, a fine great town,” Thuramon said. “There are ships come there from
all the
world, and willing girls enough, I think.”

Zamor sighed, but said nothing. Hugon stared curiously at the objects in Thuramon’s lap, the small cylinders. The warlock held one, like an old fashioned scroll-book, unwound; but he held it upward, peering at it through the sunlight.

“A book?”
Hugon asked.

“A most ancient book,” Thuramon said, still turning the roll in his fingers. “But not made to be read by men’s eyes. See how the light shines through it, thus… the letters, so small…” He sighed. “It will be difficult, very difficult.” He rolled it up again, and put it back in the pile.

“Whose eyes, then?”
Hugon asked.

“The Old Ones,” Thuramon said. “An ancient race, dead before man came. There was a greater land there, in the southern sea, when they lived… and once they set up certain places where their books and other things might be kept. For the future…” He stared at the objects in his lap, darkly. “I don’t know why they did so much, to be honest. For their own
kind,
or for others that they thought might come… who knows? But there, on that island, is the last of their archive halls. I learned of its existence a long time ago, in another place. And of the guardians, those Moroloi, unkillable and mindless, who would slay any who came near.”

“Your staff seemed to be a perfectly sound defense, sir,” Hugon said. “It saved us, too.”

“It is a simple thing, that staff,” Thuramon told him. “And like most simple things, it took me long years to make it. And more years than that to discover that it could be made at all. I sought the clues, in one place and another… for this.” He touched the pile of small cylinders and grinned.

“Listen, young man,” Thuramon went on, leaning closer, his eyes brightly intent. “I am very old, older than you would credit if I told you. I’ll die someday, like any other man.
but
I’ve much to do before then, much. Once, a great evil was done, a thing so evil that it should not be spoken of… and you have no need to know it, in any case. But because of this evil thing, many worlds were shaken… not your world alone, but many.”

His eyes held Hugon’s, intently. “If you live long enough, you may understand what I say… or in another life, in time. But I can tell you as much as you need to know, now. I came to these lands, a long time ago, to work a certain task; a work that others like me do, in other places… a work that may never be finished. And I found a man who could serve that work.”

Hugon, still and quiet with his back against the rough wood of the boat’s side, listened. He felt a strange awe, a new thing in him who had always been a mocker and a skeptic. Thuramon’s eyes glowed as he spoke, and Hugon heard.

“He was… like any other man, good, bad, and middling,” Thuramon said, and smiled to himself.
“Better than some, worse than others.
What else can I say? He had honor, and courage… and a little wisdom. Enough wisdom not to want to be a king…”

“Now, that’s a considerable wisdom,” Hugon said.

“You understand that, do you?” Thuramon said. “Good. Well, I tricked him, in the warlock’s way.
Gained his word to help me in a struggle which he never fully understood… more for my benefit than ever for his own, though the evil we fought had already touched him and his folk, to their great sorrow.”

There was a silence, broken only by the lap of waves and the creak of the rigging. High overhead, a seabird cried, and the dragonet stirred, staring upward but not moving. Zamor, listening at the oar, was as still as Hugon.

“The man I speak of was called Kavin, once prince of the lost land Dorada,” Thuramon said, slowly. “I was with him; and when he and the remnant of his people fled in the end from their destroyed valley, I was also there.
And when they came to the land to the east, Koremon, which lies near the Isle of Dragons… there too.
I went with Kavin, and a few companions, out of Koremon, into the great mountain, where we found a place of evil. A place that was one of the seedlings of that evil I spoke of… and we destroyed it,”

Hugon nodded. “I know the tale,” he said, “
though
it seems difficult to believe even a warlock can live so long as that. Old man, that story is of a time… why, you would be two hundred!”

“Well, then?” Thuramon said, and grinned again.

“I wish I knew how it is,” Hugon said, shrugging. “I’ve been able to resist the artful tales of fine charlatans in a hundred places… and here I sit, believing your wild story. I do believe it… and I cannot understand why.” He chuckled, “But
go
on, then.”

“There’s so little truth in the world that it’s easy to distinguish its face in a crowd, by reason of its oddity,” Thuramon said.

“I believe him,” Zamor said suddenly, and fell silent again, watching Thuramon.

“I’ve heard the tale of Kavin,” Hugon said, resting his chin in his hand. “How he fared forth to the Black City, where three evil ones ruled; broke their power, and returned to Koremon. Ruled there, and left numerous offspring… one of whom was an ancestor of my own, founder of my clan.” Hugon chuckled. “A wild rogue, too, it’s said, who had to flee Koremon and return to the mountains of Meryon for something of the same reasons I’ve had myself, at times.”

“All true,” Thuramon said, solemnly. “But… there was a tale never told. I shall tell it to you now… for a reason.”

Beware magician’s reasons, Hugon thought, but said nothing.

“The last and greatest of those evil ones whom Kavin fought was called…
Ess.
He was not human. There was nothing at all of humanity in him; he came from a world no man could know. I called him evil… but he was not. He was neither evil nor good, only so much a stranger to this world that such words had no meaning. And what he was, the things he desired… no human could know. And one thing more… he could not die.”

Hugon stared. “I had heard of some such monster… but didn’t Kavin slay him, as the story goes?”

Thuramon shook his head. “Here, there lies a deep mystery. Kavin went to the place where Ess dwelled, and then…” He stopped and pulled his beard, staring at Hugon. “There are deep things here; it may be too deep for your mind. But let me try.
Think now of time, the progression of days and nights as you know it… and of the world, the lands and seas and folk, known to you.
Of… reality.”