The Revenants (13 page)

‘Annee said twas no mor’ an a twister’s tale, no truthin-nit….’

‘Ai, believe that as will.’

‘Believe it! Creetur came outta deep water….’

‘Nai. Uth horns an teeth inna tail, doubt not….’

‘Weel. Cudda done.’

Their robes were thrown carelessly over the bench. Nathan had told him that of all wayfarers, seamen and caravansers were most careless about the orbansin but were even so not often bothered by the Keepers of the Seals. Jaer could make little of their talk, and he jumped, startled, as a quiet voice said from behind him,

‘Thee look puzzled, wanderer. Hast not heard salt water talk afore this time?’

Jaer turned to confront a thin, long face, turned rather more sallow than tan by the sun, capped by pale locks which curved across a high, almost unlined brow. The face was wedgelike, coming forward from the ears in flat planes to thrust forward in a high-bridged nose between eyes the colour of washed stones, browny-green, surrounded by a network of tiny lines. Small white teeth showed briefly above a petulant lower lip almost hidden in the close curls of light beard. A foxish face, thought Jaer.

‘They dispute the existence of sea monsters,’ the stranger said.

‘Ah,’ commented Jaer noncommittally.

‘Ah, indeed. One sailor says that the creature came from deep water, lunging and dripping, with great horns. But when he told the Keepers of it, they doubted him – nay, disputed him, saying that such beasts never were, or are all dead, or could not be seen by honestly Separated men.’

‘The other sailor disputes it, too?’

‘The other wisely doubts what the Keepers doubt. Thou hast the sound of a bookish man. Thy speech marks thee.’ This was asked as though idly.

Jaer glanced about quickly. No one paid him any attention. ‘It would be better not to be marked,’ he said, drily.

‘Ah. Well, if thou art seen to be a single-goer, that marks thee of itself. Few go singly. Fools, perhaps, and madmen, and those marked for forcible robing. It none of these, we might strike bargain to travel together. That is, if thou art bound away oversea.’

Jaer drank the last of the beer, giving himself time to think. Though he had been counselled to travel as much alone as possible, he felt inadequate to the task. There was too much he did not know, such as how to take passage on a ship, how to talk best without drawing attention to himself. As he stalled, the pale man went on.

‘Thou knowest nothing of me, and I might be villain or thief. But then, so might thee. We can give names, at least. I am Medlo.’

Jaer bowed slightly. ‘I am Jaer.’

‘An odd name. But then, what name is not? “Medlo” for example conveys nothing of the person who bears it. What is it but a tag, a label, a thingummy attached to a something either less or more?’ His voice fell into a kind of singsong, almost a spoken melody.

‘Do you sing? You talk like a musician,’ said Jaer.

Medlo examined him narrowly, spoke in a new accent and style. ‘You have ears that hear more than words, youngun. Yes. I can sing a bit. I’m better than fair with the jangle, and there are other instruments I’ve played a bit with.’

Jaer smiled carefully. ‘I can play the jangle a little.’

The other returned the smile as carefully. ‘Then there might be reason for us to travel together. Musicians are acceptable still, in most places.’ He stood to reach for the jangle which was tied across his pack by a broidered sash with decorative fringes. He nodded toward Jaer’s instrument, and Jaer wished momentarily that he had held his tongue. He had not played for months, not since the old men had died. Still, there was little choice now. He would be safer with company, and safer still if he seemed a legitimate part of that company. He wiped his lips on the back of his hand and burrowed the jangle out from among his bedding.

The pale man said, Tune it to mine. It looks as though the strings have long been slack.’

Jaer strummed softly, taking the note from Medlo’s instrument, bringing the strings slowly into tune. Medlo played bits and pieces of tunes, including one which Nathan had taught Jaer, and Jaer found the key after a moment’s search. The pale man nodded.

‘Keep the rhythm strongly, and pay no attention to what I am doing. Together we will sound as though we both knew.’ He winked, and Jaer flushed as he bent above the strings. Before long he forgot his embarrassment and began to enjoy the quick dance of the plucking fingers. He caught the jangles so that bells and strings sounded together, remembering the tone walks Nathan had shown him. When they had played it through twice, Medlo stopped them with a tone walk to the top fret. Around them voices rose in pleasure, and coins struck the table by their mugs.

Jaer was startled enough to flush again.

‘Well enough,’ said Medlo, gathering the coins with a gesture of thanks to those nearby. ‘It would need work to sound as though we had been together long, but we would do well enough. Let us talk in my cubby at the bend of the stairs.’

The cubby slanted into a corner beside the stairs, a cot against one wall and a round window staring into the inn yard. Medlo caught Jaer’s measuring look. ‘The window is large enough to get out, if need be. You look rather fearful, friend Jaer. Untrusting.’

Jaer sat gingerly upon the end of the cot. ‘How much should one traveller trust another?’

‘Ha! If one traveller is as young as you seem to be, he should be as wary as you are and depend little upon trust.’

‘I’m fifteen,’ said Jaer in annoyance. ‘Is that so young?’

‘Yes. Very young. One needs to be old enough to know what one would die for, what one would live for, what is worth protecting, and what is unimportant enough to let go. I did not know any of that when I was little older than you, when I left the high courts of Methyl-Drossy in the dead of the night to wander away to the Northlands. Then it was go and find out or stay and die. Ten years ago. I’ve learned since that the choice was not as simple as it seemed then.’

‘Someone was after you?’

‘Someone wanted me out of the way. They did not care enough to come after me – I think. At least, if they once did, they no longer do so. And you?’

‘I don’t know. There isn’t any reason that anyone should care about me one way or the other. Except that I keep having this feeling that I’m being watched. Or followed.’

‘A feeling many of us might share. Well, though it might be better for each of us if we were other people, still we are only Jaer and Medlo. Two travellers in orbansin going where it is that travellers go. Shortly, at the fullness of the tide, I take ship for Hynath Town. If you cannot pay passage, I will lend it to you in return for your company – and your labour at the jangle in weeks to come.’

Jaer flushed once more, staring at his boots. He was still fearful, not trusting this man nor any other, and yet-what else offered better? Ephraim had often said that of the brooding upon conjecture there is no end, nor of the construction of false hypotheses. He might as well stop guessing and risk something. He would not, however, tell this foxish man that he carried enough gold for one hundred passages from Candor. Instead, ‘If you will buy my passage, I will be your fellow musician.’ He added to himself silently. ‘And save my gold for emergencies.’

The evening watch was called through the streets as they walked to the wharf to board the fat-bellied ship which waited the tide. The ship wallowed out of harbour, and Jaer watched Candor dwindle behind him as he tried to decide whether the motion made him sick enough to lose his dinner.

Jaer woke in the dark on the fourth night of the voyage oppressed by dreams and a feeling of heaviness which he could not identify. He could not get back to sleep, and the morning and day went by with him hunched against the rail, half-hypnotized by the sparkle of water and not thinking of anything. Medlo insisted that they spend some time in practice, but Jaer’s mind was not on it and Medlo finally gave it up to go play card games with the crew. Evening came, the feeling of apprehension grew heavier, and Jaer wrapped himself in his orbansa, refusing food, to fall into an early, restless sleep.

He was swimming in a wide wilderness without horizons in the company of fish-tailed men and women through translucent shadows over watery depths. From a distance without direction a huge voice tried to tell him something important, but she could not understand what it was. The voice kept urging her to answer, but she could not – or would not – speak that language. Then the huge voice faded into an approaching silence. Something had not been answered, so was coming to see for itself… and behind it came something else, a threat, a wave of grey force which tumbled out of remoteness toward her. She woke, crying out, to find Medlo shaking her.

‘It’s coming at us,’ she cried. ‘Medlo, make them turn the ship away. There’s something coming at us, and something terrible following.’

Medlo gave her a strange, wildly questioning look as he leapt from the deck to speak persuasively to the helmsman. The ship swung slowly away to the right, away from the previous line of movement.

The night was still, the wind steady from the southeast. Overhead the stars rocked silently in and out of the rigging. Jaer stood at the rail, peering to the left, to the line they had left, seeing the great form lunge up into the moonlight, dripping horns gleaming against the sky, white wake streaming behind the lashing tail which swept it on and away toward Candor. Behind that great form was something unseen, only felt, a harshness against the skin, a metallic acridity beneath the tongue. Jaer caught her breath, feeling Medlo’s arm around her shoulders and hearing the helmsman’s gasp. Away behind them the dark form faded into distance, and the metallic taste was replaced by a kind of sickness. She leaned over the rail, gagging.

Medlo said in a deceptively calm voice, ‘Do you do that often?’

‘I could feel it in my dream,’ said Jaer. Her tongue felt coated with fabric. ‘Searching for me.’

‘Something more than a dream, wasn’t it?’ Medlo ran his hands across her body, touching her here and there in quick, patted questions. ‘Should I ask what you have done with Jaer?’

‘No. That is, no. Nothing.’

‘Nothing. I see. A bit of shape and sex shifting. A small change of persons. I would say you are slightly shorter, a little rounder in places. The voice, of course, was the giveaway.’

‘I suppose it was. I hoped we would get to shore before it happened.’

‘Ah. So it’s not a new thing. And your sea monster friend? Is that a new thing?’

‘I’ve never seen anything like it before.’

‘Remarkably like the thing the sailors were discussing. The thing the Keepers say does not exist.’

‘I’ve been told that the Keepers say what it suits them to say.’

‘Not a view which should be loudly expressed.’

‘I know. What are you going to do with me?’

Medlo laughed, shortly, tangled his fingers in his short beard and stared at the sky. ‘I’m going to sit down with you very quietly and let you tell me about you, and how, and when, and why….’

‘I can’t.’

‘You can try,’ he said firmly.

Dawn found her still trying. Medlo found it easier to accept the strangeness of Jaer-male, Jaer-female than he did the idea that he/she was determined to travel eastward without any idea of the dangers, the terrain, or what such creatures as the sea monster signified. She had said six times, the last several in increasing irritation and weariness, that she had taken oath to continue Ephraim and Nathan’s quest. Medlo would not understand.

He picked up the quest book which she had offered in part explanation and read from it, in a sneering tone.

‘Downward the fabled postern stands
.

Three chainbound captives are set free
.

The Queen of Beasts wanders the lands

between Gerenhodh and the sea
.

‘From shadows the black warrior comes
,

basiliskos his battle flag
.

A singer beats the dead-march drums
,

beside him maiden, mother, hag
.

‘Wounded nor whole shall they prevail
,

these seven shall the Girdle bind
,

nor cease, nor turn, nor die, nor fail
,

shall all men seek what these shall find.’

He shook his head, pityingly. ‘I have chanted legendary nonsense at banquets with better stuff in them than that. It doesn’t even add up. There are ten in the verse if you count the basilisk, which it would probably be very wise to do. If anyone had a basilisk on his battle flag, it should be I, for that is the sign of the Drossynian Kings, but I cannot recall ever being called a “black warrior.” It has a nice cryptic quality, but if I were you, I’d give it up. You’ve troubles enough without setting off on an idiot’s mission.’

Jaer struggled upright, set her jaw. Her voice trembled but was unequivocal in intent. ‘I’ve said what I’m going to do. If I meet a chained captive, I’ll free it. And the next one after that and the next one after that. If I see anything that even looks like a basilisk, whatever that is, I’ll
put
it on a flag and find some warrior to carry it. You’re not obligated to me. I’d rather you weren’t. I’ll pay you back the passage money, and you can let me be. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.’

Medlo snorted. ‘If I were at all sensible, I’d take you up on that. But, Great Lord of Fire, there’s a story building here, and I’m a story fancier. I’ll go along for a time, because it amuses me, because I wouldn’t miss it for all the realm of Methyl-Drossy back again, plated in gold, with peacocks. Besides, you’ve overlooked something. Your silly verse calls for a singer who can play drums. A singer I am, and a drummer I am, so accept me as foreordained and quit struggling.’