P. Hodgell - The Sea of Time

“I told you that my powers are limited Undercliff,” said the latter, with the hint of a child’s pout. “If Kroaky hadn’t been so insistent, I never would have come. Mother Vedia, can you do any good here?”

The matron rubbed a hand over her face, smearing the dust there into a network of wrinkles which the limestone had glossed over. In general, she looked older and more dumpy than she had before as a statue. The snakes slithered restlessly over her plump form, in and out of her loose clothing. Two snapped at each other until she absentmindedly slapped them apart.

“I should have been called sooner, say, when the boy first fell.”

“He seemed all right then,” the bald girl said truculently, revealing filed teeth as she spoke and snapping off her words. Jame recognized her accent from the Cataracts. A Waster, here? “Then he was drowsy and complained of a headache. That was a week ago. Now we can’t get him to rest.”

The boy struggled in the young man’s arms. “It hurts!” he whined.

Jame wondered if this was the unlicensed child-thief whom the guards had thrown down the drain.

Mother Vedia rested a hand on the boy’s head. Her fingers sank down through hair and skin to the bone beneath, which she felt.

“He’s lucky not to have split open his skull. As it is, he’s merely cracked it. Now, which one . . .” She fumbled among a collection of small bottles that hung clinking from her belt. The snakes selected one. “Ah, yes. I can at least make him sleep. Now, drink up, little man.”

The child tried to refuse, but the youth with ginger hair held his nose and ruthlessly poured the potion down his throat. Soon his thrashing quieted. The young man settled him back on the pallet, then raised hazel eyes to regard Jame over the intervening heads.

“And now, as for you . . .”

Jame found herself suddenly the focus of all eyes. The children scattered as the bald girl hurtled through them. Jame countered her charge with a water-flowing move that sent her stumbling among the columns. She came back with a knife in her hand.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“I’m not a spy, but I am looking for one—Graykin by name. Have you seen him?”

Ginger slipped between them. “Hush, Fang,” he said, in a nasal voice that Jame almost thought she recognized from sometime earlier that day. “Not everyone from above is an enemy. What is this man to you?” he asked Jame.

“A servant. If he imposed on your hospitality, I apologize for him. He can be . . . overzealous.”

“And who are you?”

“Many things. Call me the Talisman.”

The youth smiled, baring big, white teeth. “Well, then, call me Kroaky. Fang, my dear, he’s your catch. Will you surrender him?”

The Waster glowered. “Don’t call me ‘dear.’ Anyway, should we trust an Overcliffer?”

“She apparently trusts us.” He indicated the ragged band of urchins who had spread out around Jame and were watching her closely. “Will you fight these, Talisman?”

“Not willingly. They look too fierce.”

The children nudged each other and giggled.

Fang reluctantly sheathed her knife. “Well, all right. He’s more trouble than he’s worth, anyway.”

She led Jame to the back of the cave and a hole in the floor, extending down into a bottle-necked cavity. Firelight glistened on water on its floor. The pit appeared empty, until a white face turned to peer up from the depths.

“Graykin?”

“Lady?” His voice echoed hollowly. “At last! Get me out of here!”

“Are you sure you want him?” asked Kroaky.

Jame sighed. “No, but he’s my responsibility.”

A coiled rope lay nearby, fixed at one end to a rock formation. Kroaky kicked it down the hole. The line went taut. Scrabbling and cursing came from below, then a thin, grimy hand groped over the stone lip. Jame seized it by the wrist and helped a scruffy figure to climb out.

Graykin shook out his wet robe, looking furious. “Days I’ve been up to my knees in that stinking water, pelted with stale bread. Didn’t you hear me yelling for you?”

“Not really,” said Jame apologetically. “I gathered that you were annoyed, nothing worse.”

“Huh! Why did you chuck me down there anyway?” he demanded of Kroaky.

“I didn’t. Fang did. She doesn’t like spies—and none of your Intelligencer’s tricks: they don’t work down here, as you may have realized.”

“Why did you go Undercliff?” Jame asked as they made their way back to the ladder leading to the Overcliff.

Receiving no immediate answer, she glanced back at Graykin who trudged mulishly at her heels.

“You told me to find out all I could about Kothifir.”

“Well, yes. I didn’t expect you to get quite so . . . er . . . immersed, though.”

He stopped and stomped. His boots squished. “No matter what I do, you only laugh at me! Well, I’ve found out more than you think. For example, I bet you didn’t know that that girl in a white tunic was Lady Professionate.”

Jame stared at him. “The blonde? Why, she couldn’t be more than thirteen years old!”

Graykin smirked. “You don’t know anything about the guild lords, do you? While they’re in office, they don’t age.”

“And they can’t be killed,” added Jame, remembering Lord Artifice’s declaration.

“Yes,” Graykin admitted, a little huffily. “That too. The thing is that Lady P has made it through every Change for at least fifteen years, and Lord Merchandy for three times that at least.”

“Now you interest me. What exactly is this mysterious Change?”

Graykin paused to wring out his dripping hem, over which he had been tripping, revealing a dirty white sash around his waist.

“I’m still investigating that. One happened soon after I first got here. Suddenly the guild lords and masters lost all of their powers, not to mention the king. It was crazy. People didn’t know what to do. No one seemed accountable to anyone. Can you imagine what it’s like in a rigidly structured society when that structure is ripped out of it? Suddenly—oh, horrors—everyone is equal. The Overcliff was like a ship without a rudder, less so the Undercliff from what I hear, which is another reason why I came down here to look around.”

Jame wondered if the Kencyrath would go to pieces like that without its god. Would the Highborn have enough innate power to hold everything together? Now, there was an unsettling thought. Yet hadn’t she often wished that the Kendar were free of their compulsion to be bound to the Highborn? If that ever happened, though, what would they do with themselves?

“And then?” she asked Graykin.

“People got tired of the disorder and began to reorganize. Former grandmasters and lords started politicking for supporters, but as far as I can see, that seldom works. The most unlikely people can suddenly find themselves elevated to lord- or mastership. Take Lady Professionate. She was only a doctor’s servant when the white came to her, not that she hasn’t learned a lot since then, never mind that she still looks like a child. And the more Changes she and Lord Merchandy survive, the more people believe in them. Lord Artifice is less secure.”

So, thought Jame, they were Kothifir’s equivalent of Tai-tastigon’s New Pantheon gods, but less stable because the Kencyr temple that gave them power was too.

“How often do these Changes occur?”

“I’m told that they used to happen every decade or so, but recently much more frequently.”

That in turn suggested that the temple was growing less stable. Perhaps that was what Torisen had meant when he had called Kothifir especially dangerous just now. While he and Jame had talked more freely in those last days at Gothregor than in the past two years, some things had remained unsaid on both sides.