Paul Kearney: The Mark of Ran

So with autumn late upon the world the foursome would sit about the driftwood fire as it spat and sparked blue in the hearth, and beyond the stout walls of Eyrie, Ran in his tantrums began to batter the stony coast in his annual dance.

It was more burdensome to Rol than past years, this autumn, and the long northern winter to follow. After they had hauled the wherry up on the beach and made her fast, and Grandfather had blessed her labors with a libation of barley ale, the whole other world of the sea was closed until the turning of the year, and for Rol it was like a small bereavement. There were only the well-worn features of the headland and the bleak moors about it, and beyond it, lights twinkling in the early dark of the evenings, the lamplit windows of Driol where he had never been and was not allowed to go. Not yet. So he tramped the moors with his birding bow like the exile his grandfather insisted he was, hunting what game had not gone to earth. Or he and Morin sat wmending nets in the house when the weather was too grim for wildfowling, and spliced rope endlessly, and when the winds abated for a while they would scale the surrounding cliffs and bring back baskets of late seabird eggs to brighten Ayd’s day and make Grandfather rub his bony hands together. Over gull-egg omelette they would sit about the table listening to Grandfather’s tales of the wider world.

He spoke of the rise of Bionar, greatest nation of the earth, but one that had been cursed by the endless wars over the fate of the barren Goliad, wherein legend had it mankind had woken and taken its first steps under the watchful eyes of the last angels. He recalled with narrowed stare the white wastes of the Winterpack Sea, the pancake ice crackling past his bows and on the horizon the blinding peaks of the Krescir, which no man had ever climbed. And then, puffing smoke, he would switch tack, and wax lyrical about the souks of Kassa, the spice-tang heavy in the hot air about the stalls, the silk-clad jeremdhar of the Khalif striding by with golden apples on the butts of their spears, and beyond the ochre walls of ancient Khasos the shimmering expanse of the Gokran, birthplace of scorpions.

He would speak freely about any country, kingdom, or sea lane in the world, but when Rol asked the questions he most wanted answering, Grandfather’s seamed face would shut. Of his own origins, Rol knew only that his parents were dead, and that he had been born at sea, and was thus a citizen of no land in the world. The rest was hints and riddles, and not even overindulgence in barley beer could pry more out of the old man.

So the first dark half of the winter passed, the fifteenth of Rol’s life.

Two

The storms were bad that year, running in frenzied abandon across the face of the sea and battening onto the ragged coast as though determined to drag it down into the deeps. All across the Seven Isles, men made sacrifice to Ussa, imploring her to restrain her wild husband, and even Grandfather slit a runt piglet’s throat in deference to the Storm-Lord, though he did so as grudgingly as a Dennifreian, and tossed its little carcass over the sea cliffs with surly reluctance.

So high were the waves that Rol and Morin had to haul Gannet farther up the beach and make for her a new berth well above the high watermark. There she lay moored fore and aft to great boulders while the sea foamed four fathoms astern in impotent rage and a northwesterly gale shrieked about the sea cliffs. The Gannet was no light craft, and for perhaps the first time Rol realized just how strong Morin was. The big man grasped her bowline and hauled her up the shingle by main force. Rol had to shout at him to slow down, as the stones had begun to rasp splinters off her keel and bottom timbers to expose the white wood.

He examined the damage while Morin stood by rubbing his palms together in contrition. “I hurt Gannet?”

“No great problem, I think. A spot of pitch here and there will cover it. You go on home. It’s getting dark anyway. The pitch pot is down in the hold. I’ll root it out and bring it back with me. We’ll never get a fire started here.”

Morin nodded obediently. He ran one huge hand over Gannet’ s gunwale apologetically, and then turned to put the screaming wind at his back and begin the climb back up out of the cove to Eyrie.

The hold was dark and evil-smelling and Rol located the sticky pitch pot by touch alone. A crab scuttled out from under his questing fingers and the accumulated miasma of a million netted fish tempted his gorge to rise. He clambered out into the storm-tossed air with relief, glad of the clean howl of the wind.

And stopped as he caught sight of the figure leaning casually against Gannet ’s sternpost.

A small man dressed in odd, shimmering gray garments the like of which Rol had never seen before. Grandfather had described such material, though, or something like it. Fishpelt, the skin of a semilegendary deep-sea creature. The man was dark and bearded, and he stared out to sea as though this were his own boat he was leaning against and he was contemplating her proper element. Rol froze, the pitch pot swinging heavy in his hand.

“There will be a good haul of drift in the morning,” the man said. His voice was light, yet it carried over the wind effortlessly, as though made way for. “The Banks are on the move; there will be men drowned by sunrise.” He turned and smiled, and Rol saw that his eyes were the color of the wind-sped waves he had been watching, cold as a night on the Winterpack.

“You have hauled up your craft in good time. I congratulate you.”

Rol found his voice, and straightened so that he was looking down on the stranger from the height of Gannet ’s tilting deck. “Ran is greedy for ships. They are his playthings. You have to keep them out of his reach.”

One black brow rose, amused. “And who told you that, I wonder?”

“My grandfather. He was at sea all his life.”

“Hard-won wisdom. He is right, your grandfather. But Ran is not an evil god. Merely capricious.”

Rol dropped from the boat down onto the wet shingle. He was taller than the stranger, and a good deal broader, but there was something intimidating about the man.

“You are from Driol, along the coast?” he asked politely.

“No.” The stranger did not elaborate, but studied Rol with an appraising air. “You are a long way from home, young Ordiseyn, and I see ten million waves yet to roll under your keel. Many is the green sea that you will go over, and in the end many a green sea will go over you; but not yet.”

“My name is Cortishane,” Rol said, somewhat alarmed to find that he was talking to a babbling lunatic. He backed away, weighing the pitch pot in his fist and calculating the distance to the man’s head. The dirk in his bootleg seemed suddenly too far from his fingers.

The stranger grinned, a gesture that transformed his countenance into something bright and feral.

“Old Ardisan has been discreet,” he said in a low voice that the storm should have rendered inaudible. “Perhaps too much so. Listen here. There is a dead city in the delta of the Vosk. It was named after you, and you will go there one day. When you do, I shall be waiting.” He raised his head to stare at the black cloud that towered over the headland. “There is a storm coming by land as well as sea, and you will be in the eye of it. This cockleshell of yours had best be a weatherly craft.”

“I have to go now,” Rol said uneasily. “They’ll be missing me up at the house.”

The stranger nodded, and his manner brightened, became mocking. “One thing more, my lad. This idyll of Ardisan’s is at an end. Fate has come knocking at the door. I have a gift for you now that may ease your passage in the world. Hold out your hand.”