Mayer Alan Brenner - Spell of Fate

Of course, this kind of stuff was easier to talk about than to pull off. No matter how much you wanted to hide behind the screen, sometimes someone just had to be out on stage helping things along. The problem with that was that once you were out in public, you made yourself a target for people to come after later if and when they thought they’d figured out what had really been going on. In Oolsmouth there had indeed been such a front-line figure; Gashanatantra, right? Of course not.

No, they thought it was me.

Actually, if it had only been that, it would have been simple, or simpler, anyway. The players Gash was working with were ones he knew. They knew him, too, but more than that they were already out for his hide. Rather than dodging indefinitely he’d decided to face them, in a manner of speaking. Because of the metabolic link and the aura it projected, they thought I was him. I was more than a front man, I was a full-fledged surrogate. I was there not only to advance Gash’s plot but to take his heat.

Of course, no one actually bothered to tell me this or fill me in on my role; no, I’d had to figure it out as I muddled along. At least Gash hadn’t decided to rearrange my face, or my anatomy in general. Fortunately for me, in his circles no one seemed to raise much of an eyebrow over a new body here or there. Still, the first person who’d showed up believing I was him was his wife. At least Jill hated him; that I could deal with. I could sympathize with it too, since I wasn’t exactly fond of him myself, but given the circumstances sympathy didn’t seem like the most productive approach to take.

If Jill had succeeded in killing me straight off I didn’t think Gash would have been too unhappy either. After all, if Gash was supposed to be dead it would have given him even more freedom of action, as well as relief from Jill and anyone else on his trail. That I hadn’t obligingly caved in had only opened the door to an extended high-wire act. In the company of Jill and her partner, Zhardann (or Jardin), the Administrator of Curses, I had somehow succeeded in extending the masquerade for days; in fact, they might not realize it was over yet. I was sure that the way we’d parted company, though, had left them more than eager to renew our acquaintance at the next possible opportunity. The least they’d be looking for would be answers I either didn’t have, or couldn’t give them and expect to remain alive.

Would they be in Peridol? Hah! - that was a sucker bet. For a Knitting everyone who thought they were someone would be in Peridol. That didn’t mean I had to make things any easier for them than they already were. If they’d picked up my trail in Oolsmouth they could have learned I’d shipped out on a boat. With all the sea traffic converging on Peridol it’d been impossible to tell if the ship was being shadowed, but it wouldn’t have been surprising. Even if we weren’t under observation, it was only elementary to figure that showing up in Peridol on foot rather than on water might keep them off balance. Of course, knowing my traveling companions, a welcoming party might be waiting for any or all of the Not Unreasonable Profit’s passengers. That being said, any reception waiting for me would probably be the nastiest; these were gods I’d been fooling around with, after all. Even if someone was merely waiting for the boat to come in to pick up our trail I didn’t want to give them that much of a break.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only possibility to consider. They could be waiting for me to split off from the others before coming after me. They could -

But there was only so far you could go in trying to anticipate how someone would surprise you next. The more reactive you became, the more initiative you threw out. I was pretty damn tired of being tossed back and forth by the whims of fate, chance, and the plots of others. I wasn’t planning to wait for another god to show up on my doorstep and sling me into another maze of their own devising. It was time to assert myself, to become again an active participant in my own story rather than just getting bounced around the landscape by the events unfolding around me.

That didn’t mean I wasn’t perpetually looking over my shoulder, waiting for the next hand to reach out from the unknown and grab me around the neck. Just because I’d come to an ideological breakpoint didn’t mean I’d lost all sense of reason. I was still half-expecting someone to pop out of the water next to the boat and hoist themselves onto the gunwales. You could say a rowboat in the middle of a fog bank had to be one of the safer places to hide out. On the other hand, these were gods etcetera etcetera; you go over the same ground often enough and it gets less and less interesting, unless you have a particular appreciation for churned mud.

Mud or no, the situation hadn’t changed. Who knew what the gods could do? More to the point, I sure didn’t know what they were capable of, other than lots of nasty surprises. They had to have limitations, but other than the ones I’d observed, which centered primarily on a shortage of good sense, and on energy supplies and the recurring need to refuel, I didn’t yet know what they were. It didn’t go nearly far enough toward evening the scales to remember that my sparring partners apparently thought I was a god too. Aside from its dubious value as a deterrent that didn’t help me a whole lot. More than outweighing the deterrent value on the downside was the fact that it seemed to keep the scheming lot of them interested in me.

The thing that bothered me more than having them think I was a god was the chance they might be right.

Even though I’d been listening for it, it suddenly occurred to me that the sound I’d been waiting for had gradually snuck up unawares. More than the constant swish and gurgle of the swells, there was now the added crash and whoosh that implied the presence of breakers and a shore. It was behind me, too, exactly where I’d been hoping for it. There’s that old proverb, about watching out what you wish for because you might get it, but in this case I couldn’t see how it was going to bite me, unless the shoreline was actually one of jagged rocks and I was about to have the keel ripped off the rowboat. In the larger case the proverb was a different story. Even so, I didn’t see how that story would pick up again until I’d made it to Peridol, though, or at least before I’d gotten through the waves onto the beach.

Everything was in place, not that I’d brought much with me off the boat. A pack of supplies sat underneath my seat, and jammed through the top of the pack lengthwise was a stout walking stick just the right heft and length for a two-hand broadsword. I left off rowing for a moment and felt around for it to make sure it hadn’t wandered off - yeah, there it was, all right. “You got anything to contribute?” I asked the stick.

It didn’t say anything, which was no more than I’d expected, but it did vibrate quickly under my hand, sending a low tingle up my wrist and into my arm. Was that a message with real content, or was Monoch just letting me know it was still alive, or whatever it really was? I couldn’t say. I didn’t know its language, if it had a language, but I had come to know its moods. At the moment it was placid enough, for a change. I didn’t know its purpose, either, beyond the fact that it was at best a reluctant ally foisted on me by Gash. That meant that it had to be a spy, and quite possibly a homing beacon too. Unfortunately, things being what they were I just couldn’t toss Monoch in the sea and be done with it, if tossing it in the sea would let me be done with it, which was another question entirely.

The sound of breakers behind me was now distinct. After perusing a navigational chart, Shaa had assured me that given the currents and the topography of the coastline I’d be encountering beach rather than rocks. I didn’t exactly trust Shaa’s seamanship, but he’d assured me he knew this section of the countryside well, and anyway I didn’t have much choice. A predawn seagull cawed somewhere overhead. Off to the left I saw white-capped foam, then the rowboat creaked and lifted. I played with the oars, trying to keep the dinghy headed straight-on, and as the wave dropped beneath me the keel grated on sand.