Sheri Tepper: King’s Blood Four

By morning the repair effort had succeeded, and we went wallowing away in a wind more violent than before, only to sight a black sail on the quivering horizon. There were general cries of dismay.

“Pawners,” Chance cried out with the others. “Would you believe it? Coastal boats don’t get taken by pawners.”

“We’re not coastal at the moment,” I pointed out. This did not seem to comfort him. As the hours wore on the pawners drew closer across the wind-whipped waters, making our Captain give up his attempt to return to the western shore and turn instead to flee eastward before the black-sailed boat. Thus we sped away, like a fat wife running from a tiger, the slender black sail gaining upon us until the ship was within hailing distance.

“…oh,” the voice came. “…oy…ai…ame…eeter.” Chance and Yarrel looked at me in astonishment, and the Seer drew close enough to lay hand upon my arm.

“ ‘Ware, lad,” he said. “I see evil and agony in this. ‘Ware, Captain. Do not believe what these men say.”

Around us the air grew chill, and we knew the Seer had drawn power making a little Demesne where we stood. I shivered, not entirely from the cold.

“They say they want only the boy named Peter,” said the Captain. “That if we give him up, they’ll go away and leave us alone. I have little need of your warning, Gamesman. Pawners are not to be believed.”

I looked at the man with respect. He did not cringe or beg. He simply told us what the circumstances were and left it for us to respond. On impulse I took the spyglass from his hand to set it upon our pursuer. High upon her foredeck a cadaverous man leaned against the rail, another glass fixed upon us so that we looked, he and I, eye to eye. I could see the curve of his lip and the slant of black brow, altogether villainous, as why should he not be, being what he was.

I whispered to the Captain, “What may we do?”

“There’s a small fog coming up, lad. We can run on before him, for he closes slowly, waiting for it to get a bit dimmer, meantime calling back and forth with much misunderstanding. If the fates are willing, we may lose ourselves and run into the harbor of the Muties.”

“I might have known,” breathed Chance.

“Muties?” I asked.

“The Immutables, young sir. The one place that pawners might not follow. If they follow and catch us up, we are lost for we are outmanned.”

Indeed, it was so. The black-sailed ship had twice our crew, young and strong. I nodded at the Captain, telling him by this to do as he thought best. You are thinking that I was quite mad? That would be a reasonable thought. At that moment none of us asked why such a ship should come out of the wind in search of me, an unnamed foundling boy, half-schooled and wholly unsatisfactory in his own House. I did not say, “why me?” nor did Yarrel, nor Chance. It was only when the little wraiths of fog had grown into curtains and we had sneaked away among the velvet folds of mist, only when we heard a yell of fury from the other ship, bodiless and directionless in the half light, only then did I turn to Chance to say for the first time, “Why me? The Captain must have misunderstood. No one would come after me …”

To which the Seer, who had stood by us throughout the long flight, murmured, “You, none other, Lad. And the time will come when you will know why too well…”to drift away then, as I understand Seers often do, into a silent musing from which he would not be aroused.

I did not know why then. Moreover, I could not imagine why. There was an exercise frequently called for by Gamesmasters when student attention flagged in the mid afternoon. They called it simply “imagining,” and the task was to imagine a series of moves at the end of which some extremely unlikely configuration of pieces might occur. I had never been good at it. Yarrel had been better. It was not surprising then, that by the time our pathetic fat ship waddled into the harbor of the Immutables, Yarrel had thought up at least three reasons why.

“Mandor may have sent them. If he is not dead, he may be remorseful and desirous of making it up to you.”

I thought this most unlikely. I had seen Mandor’s face when Mertyn moved against him.

“Mertyn may have sent them,” he went on. “He has decided he made a mistake to send you away and …”

Chance hushed him, as did I. In our opinion, mine for what small count it has, Mertyn makes very few mistakes of any kind.

“Or, someone may have seen the play,” Yarrel continued, “when the power flew at Mandor, and may have thought it came from you…”

I said, “Nonsense.”

“Truly, Peter. Some kin of Mandor may have thought so and desires to take you for vengeance.”

“But I did nothing to him. It was he who tried to kill me.”

“But, they may not know that. Someone watching from a bad vantage point, they might think it was you.”

“Or someone from afar,” agreed Chance. “Someone who saw or heard about it but did not know the truth. Perhaps they think you a Wizard Emergent, and the pawners are recruiting for a True Game somewhere.”

“Where?”

“Who knows where. Somewhere. Some petty King of a small purlieu may have offered high for a Wizard. No tested Gamesman would go to a small purlieu, so a pawner would be paid to look for a student, or a boy with talent just emerging.”

“But, it was Mertyn’s Sorcerer, not me. Mertyn’s power, not mine. Power bled into that Sorcerer for days, perhaps, little by little, so that we’d not feel it going, so that he’d be ready when the moment came. It was Mertyn! Not me.”

Chance agreed, pursing his lips and cocking his head like a bird listening to bugs in the wood. “You know it, lad. I know it, and so does Yarrel, here. Someone else may not.”

I exploded, “What do I look like? Some Wizard Child?” There was a moment’s terrified silence. One does not shout about Wizards or their children if one cares about surviving, but no lightning struck at me out of the fog.

“I look like what I am. A student. No sign of talent yet. No sign of a name. No nothing. Oh, I know what they said at the house, what that fat-faced Karl always claimed, that I was Mertyn’s Festival get. Well. So much for that and that. I’m gone from Mertyn’s House with no sign of Kinging about me to rely on. Now, this is nonsense and makes me sick inside.”

Yarrel had the grace to put his arms around my shoulders and hug me, after which Chance did the same, and we stood thus for a long moment while the ship wallowed and splashed itself toward the jetty. Around us masts of little boats sketched tall brush strokes of stone gray against cloud gray, tangles of rigging creaked and jingled while a circle of wan light hung far above us like a dead lantern. It was mid-day masked as evening with dusk bells tolling somewhere in the fog, remote and high, as though from hills, and such a feeling of sadness as I had not felt before. Long minutes told me it came from the pungent soup of salt and smoke, as of grasses burning on the water meadows, a smell as sad and wonderful as youth in speaking of endings and beginnings.

Came a hail out of the shadow, and we grated against the stones. The Captain was over the rail in a moment, talking earnestly to those he met there. The plank clattered down to let us off the unquiet deck, our legs buckling and weaving like dough from the long time on the water. Howsoever, we stiffened them fast enough to gather up our gear and follow Chance up through the lanes, twisting and dodging back upon our trail until we came to a tavern. That is, I suppose they would have called it a tavern, though most they served there was tea and things made of greenery.

There was one there to meet us, their “governor,” so they said, a brown, lean man with a little silver beard tike the chin hairs of a goat. He said his name was Riddle.