Гарри Тертлдав - The Enchanter Completed

Arvel Tarabine. He had heard what a hoard of tales the old man kept from an adventurous career. Arvel received him well, asking pardon for the absence of his lady wife. She was off at the Vionne plantation to join in the naming rite for their newest-born grandchild. However, their cook set a good board. After dining, the men had gone to the veranda for a brandy and a smoke.

An indentured servant put the refreshment tray on a small table between two chairs. Another hung a lantern from the roof. Its light drowned the frail radiance of the ellils. Wicker creaked as host and guest sat down.

“Fair is all of Dordonia that I have seen,” Olavir went on, “yet naught thus far compares with this. Well have you settlers wrought.”

Arvel sipped from his goblet. “On the whole, we’re content. It was wilderness when I found it, which cost much toil and some grief in the taming.”

Olavir stared. “Youfound it, sir?”

“With a few comrades, whom Sir Falcovan chose to survey these parts. I picked our Irroan guide. I’d been scouting for several years, you see; that was my gainful employ then. I was also spokesman when, having perused our report, the Company sent a party to buy the land from the natives.” Arvel sighed. “Utterly unlike now, it was.”

“Tanglewood and savage beasts, I imagine.”

“Also after we’d cleared and planted. I miss—”

A hoarse, thunderous basso profundo rumbled and coughed from the stream. Olavir well-nigh dropped the pipe he was charging. “What’s that?”

Arvel scowled. “A buha. I’d hoped none would come this early in the summer. The hideous noise frightens our fowl and livestock. Moreover, they spoil the fishing. Aforetime we went after ‘em in boats, with cold steel, but since losing men to one that attacked, we’ve gotten us a wizard who drives ‘em away. A pretty copper such a spell costs, too.” He shrugged. “Well, otherwise he serves as schoolmaster.”

“It’s a Halfworld creature, then? A water dweller?”

“Aye, but formerly its haunts were in swampy feverlands where few folk have wish to go. The form of a toad, more or less; the size of a bear. Its tongue flies yards from its gape, to snap up any fish or birds that unwittingly pass too near. But it’ll devour whatever else it catches. The first buhas here, oh, they feasted on the nuukai, they did. Crouched unseen below a fall—snap, snap, snap!”

“What brought them hither?”

“Earlier, they’d shunned this valley. We learned from the Irroans that they fear the werrows. When a werrow comes down to drink, any buhas thresh off, blind with terror. The Irroans say they can’t endure such beauty. Not that this ever happened before, for werrows care no more than do men for those mires and muddy streams. There, I think, the buha’s Halfworld prey is bog-wisps.” Arvel drained his goblet, refilled it, topped his guest’s, and reached into the jar to load his pipe. “At least the brute will soon fall quiet. It’s belching the foul vapors from its last feeding.”

“Never have I heard of these monsters.”

“Nay, for like skunks, they’re not of the Old Lands. Much that we found beyond Ocean was strange to us.” Arvel grinned. “But we found no elephants or unicorns.”

The booming did stop shortly after he dipped a pine splinter into a firepot on the table and ignited his smokeweed. Again the two heard the cascades and, barely, the lilting of the ellils.

“You saw—werrows—in those days agone?” the traveler ventured.

Arvel nodded. His tone turned wistful. “Say rather, in the gloamings and dawns, and on moonlit nights. A few, oftenest alone, for they were lordly beings, however lightly they moved upon the earth. Lightly, aye; they left never a track behind, unless in the dew or hoarfrost.” Now Olavir thought he too was quoting, for he had not seemed given to flowery language. “Yet he was mighty of stature, was my lord werrow, like unto an elk. His coat was blue-white, silken, with a damascene ripple as he walked or as he soared in a leap, while his horse tail streamed and shimmered behind. His eyes were like full moons. His rack was like twin trees, ebon, many-branched. Along the tines gleamed their leaves, star points. Never would a one of us, nor the fiercest Irroan, lift hand against him. When we began to clear and cultivate, we left untouched the meadows of asphodel where the werrows pastured.”

His gaze drifted to the river. “Nor did we willingly trouble the nuukai. Water sprites, they were, small, slender, changeable of hue and shape. They frolicked in the falls. When they sprang aloft, the drops and mists off them made fleeting rainbows by day, crystal flickerings after dark. They sang, easily heard, calls and melodies, choruses that wove together with birdsong but went on after the birds departed for winter, the year around.”

He shook his head. “Mayhap a gaffer makes up certain memories, yet I do think they sweetened our dreams.”

Olavir charged his own pipe. The two smoked and sipped in silence until Olavir asked, “When and how did this change, sir?”

“Not all at once.” Arvel shook himself, as though shedding the mood, and said matter-of-factly: “Belike it struck me so hard because I’d often been elsewhere for weeks or months on end. I was more hunter, trapper, and trader with the Irroans than I was a farmer. Thrice a soldier of sorts. Thus on returning I’d mark things that had stolen half unnoticed upon those who stayed the whole while.”

“What were they?”

“In the beginning, for the better. It’s rich soil. Our crops flourished. Best were native plants, maize, squash, beans, and of course smokeweed, but seeds from the Old Lands also grew. Those suited to the clime, that is. We bred sleek cattle, fat hogs, and the finest of horses. Our orchards and honeybees did wondrous well. I could go on. Let me but say that sithence some things have supplanted others, and not complain. Despite any adversities, we’ve made good lives in Dordonia.”

“Youwon them, really, not so, sir?” Olavir said in honest admiration. “During childhood I heard overseas tidings of terrible struggles in the earlier years.”

“Aye, we were plagued with everything from wolves and rattlesnakes to venomous ivy. Nor was the Halfworld always friendly. If we had no ogres or lupasks, we must cope with the likes of gnashers and ghost casts. Then there was the Red Leech—but that’s a repulsive story.”

“And the Irroans.”

“A few clashes. One war, when the Kamaho confederacy invaded. That campaign took most of a year.” Arvel broke off with a laugh. “Folk have wearied of my military reminiscences.”

“To me they’re new.”

“If you care to stay for some days, I’ll fill your ears.” Again Arvel sat for a bit in thought. “The war was my longest absence. Thus I was the most jolted by what happened here meanwhile. It had waxed like an avalanche.” He grimaced. “Nor was I pleased to discover, at last, what had begun it.”

“Why not, if I dare ask?”

Arvel puffed hard on his pipe and said a little harshly: “Best you have the account from me. For it concerns a kinsman of my wife, and his own lady. Altogether ill hap. Nevertheless—it came about through them.”

Aboard the merchant carrackIllanda Captain Ferain Grancy yielded to no man, storm, or monster. He had navigated her around the Middle Sea, along the eastern coasts of the Old Lands from Norren to Makango, and twice across Ocean itself. He had ridden out hurricanes, beaten off pirates and savages, quelled a mutiny, and once, by such adroit maneuvering that his guns all made their target, slain a menacing kraken. In port he was a shrewd bargainer for his cargoes, thus earning handsome commissions.

Otherwise, though, ashore he was apt to feel lost and lubberly, seldom more than now.