Mayer Alan Brenner - Spell of Fate

Of course, it was a ship, so there were rats. As Haddo wriggled through the narrow space, pushing the sack he’d picked up on his way past the kitchen in front of him, something chittered at him from up ahead deeper in the blackness. Haddo growled back at it. The squeaking persisted, joined by a blinking set of green eyes. Obviously this was a rodent he had not previously encountered. “Warned you did I,” muttered Haddo. A red glow spread from under his hood, then focussed down and became twin beams, straight, clear, and narrow with a color like spotlit rubies. The rat’s green eyes fluoresced and its chittering turned to a squeal as its sharp-edged shadow spread out behind it. Where the beams converged, a puff of smoke rose out of its fur. Then the rat had had enough. It twisted away with a final wail and was gone. The beams and the red glow died. Haddo edged through the area the rat had abandoned and reached the lower edge of a crate. He rapped on it. “Who is it?” said a muffled voice.

“Who think you it is?” Haddo snapped.

“You can’t be too careful,” grumbled the voice. The wood panel clicked and slid upward, and Haddo edged through the opening. The panel glided shut behind him. “Hold on while I get the lights.” A ripple of shining green ran around the wall over Haddo’s head and snaked off at right angles, outlining the inside of the crate. Then yellow burst out through the green, the two colors pulsated once or twice as they worked things out between them, and the light level settled down to a constant low but serviceable glow.

The crate measured perhaps eight feet on a side. As you’d expect from a crate in a cargo hold, the space ahead of Haddo was crammed tight with stuff - rolled parcels concealed in oilskins, boxes with latches, a lashed set of short metal rods, a hand-axe. Barely visible atop the mounds of equipment was the curve of a spherical cauldron.

Behind Haddo, a ladder was fastened to the inside surface of the crate. The same lattice-work retaining wall that kept the contents of the crate from collapsing into the entrance-space continued upward along the ladder’s path. Haddo grasped the ladder and scurried up. At the top of the ladder a two-foot-high gap separated the cargo and the crate’s upper lid. Protruding from the center of the cargo was the upper swell of the round ball, and swung back from the center of the ball was a domed lid. “Outside met I rat,” Haddo told the creature perched inside the sphere, its head propped on the lip.

“You want to tell me about inconvenience?” said the creature, its pointed ears splayed at conflicting angles. “Try taking an ocean voyage inside a box.” He moved his head around in a slow circle, carefully stretching his neck muscles, then worked one shoulder back and forth to match. “I’m getting to be nothing but a mess of hog-tied ligaments.”

Haddo tossed the sack he’d lugged up the ladder onto a cluster of skyrockets protruding out of the baggage next to the ball. He gestured at the metal sphere. “Have you not your vehicle, Favored? Life support facilities has it, said you not?”

“There’s a big difference between support and comfort,” said Favored-of-the-Gods. “At least you get to walk outside on the deck.”

“A pleasure always that is not,” Haddo said drily. “Also my idea this plan was not.”

“You could have tried to talk me out of it.”

“Frozen permanently in frown is mouth,” asked Haddo, “or is just to make of visitor with supplies to welcome feel?”

“If you weren’t bigger than me I’d whomp you one,” Favored muttered.

“Testy is getting on ship everyone,” Haddo reflected. “At throats people are.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

Haddo shrugged. “Not alone are you. Good or bad not is, fact is only. Of it make what choose you. To Peridol ride wanted you.”

“Well, yeah, all right,” said Favored. “You’d think if my patron wanted me in Peridol for the Knitting she’d at least have supplied transportation, but no.”

“Insensitive ones work you for,” commiserated Haddo. “Downtrodden masses are we.”

“You starting with the dialectic again?” Haddo shrugged. “Anyway,” Favored went on, “as long as you’re bringing up insensitivity, how’s that Karlini of yours doing? You keeping an eye on him?”

“Faith has kept Karlini. Speak to wife will he not.”

Favored shook his head. “I don’t know about him, Haddo. He could be a weak link. If he lets something slip to her - or, worse, directly to Max - Max’ll come after us the first thing he does. I don’t mind telling you I’d rather not face him head-on.”

“Danger is Max. Getting around it no way is. To check put on Max, options limited are. Karlini most attractive option is.”

“You’re sure he’s not going to fall apart?”

“Sure am I not,” snapped Haddo. “Said I not under strain is he not. Observing closely am him I. Difficult position have put we in him.”

“So we’re just going to watch while his fuse burns down?”

“Credit give me for brains,” Haddo said. “When Peridol reach we, mood of Karlini must we lift. Cycle must we break. This for, place Peridol perfect is.” Haddo hesitated. “Problem only is Karlini not. Told I not you about ice the attack.”

One of Favored’s eyes snapped wide open and the other squinted half-shut, his nictitating membranes twitching. “Did you say ‘ice’?”

“Ice said I,” said Haddo reluctantly. “On trip down river to Oolsmouth attacked by icebergs was boat. Thought Karlini and Shaa against them was aimed strike this.”

“Does that mean what I think?”

“Know not I, suspect I only.”

Favored slumped back into his sphere. His voice echoed out with a hollow metallic tone. “That’s the last thing we need right now.”

“Last need we, first yet but may we have.”

“Ice, you say?” Favored repeated, with a note of disbelief. “That’s not good. What the hell business does he have heading out of the frozen wastes to come after you down here, anyway? I thought he was out of the picture for good. You said he couldn’t survive out of that climate, either.”

“Maybe someone he got refrigerator to build.”

“Damn,” said Favored, now thoroughly morose. “You got anything else you want to tell me? What about that seagull?”

“Bird speaks not yet.”

Favored hung his head back over the lip of the hatch. “I don’t like that either. The idea of that bird makes me nervous. As long as that thing’s walking around … Well, I don’t like it.”

“Much around is there that like you not,” said Haddo. “Agree with you do I, yet strike we preemptively can not. To be on guard, to wait, to watch is of wisdom the strategy.”

“Wisdom? You trying to turn yourself into a sage now too?”

“Particularly wise am I not. Open merely are eyes.”

“Yeah, well, you’re probably right,” Favored said. “You’ve had more fieldwork than me anyway. There sure isn’t much we could do on a boat even if we wanted to. Once we get to Peridol the story’ll be different.”

“In Peridol will be many things different,” Haddo said. “Enjoy you of refill the fruit.” Always a useful ally, was Favored, Haddo mused as he squirmed his way back out of the crate and into the passageway in the cargo hold. Seeing adequately as always in the minimal light, he padded quietly toward the exit, dodging around the jogs and corners. Two to the left, then one to the right, then - whoompf!

“Where from came wall?” muttered Haddo, taking a step back. There hadn’t been a surface at this spot on his way in. Then all at once he realized that what he’d run into wasn’t a wall at all. It was a man. A large man, in fact a very large man. A man whose mass owed nothing to sloth or fat and everything to cord upon band of muscle, that and his hereditary ceiling-scraping stature.