Dave Duncan - Children of Chaos

♦

Thinking again about her visitor in the night, Fabia realized that the seer had spoken as if she had personal experience of the voyage so far. Indeed, she was almost certainly one of the riverfolk in the convoy, because she had been present in Skjar not long before Fabia left, and no one could have journeyed any faster upriver than Saltaja had. The Witness must be disguised as a sailor!

But which? Fabia ran through the boat crews in her mind without success. There were more than a dozen adult women in the flotilla, but the singsong dialect disguised voices, and they spent most of their days just sitting and talking, sheltered from the sun and wind inside voluminous burnooses. Although they might strip down to very little when there was work to be done, they owned a half-dozen slaves—all Florengian prisoners of war, who scowled at Fabia from shame or resentment and avoided her—who attended to most of the hard labor. Yet even the slaves seemed healthy and well nourished. Better by far the placid river life than the grinding drudgery of a peasant.

♦

The day dragged on. One could count boats, or clouds. At the stern one could trail lines to catch supper. One could wait for the hex to start producing results.

♦

Around noon, the riverfolk would rummage through the cargo and hand out snacks of fruit, cheese, pickled fish, or whatever they had traded recently. In his usual boorish fashion, Perag went first, pushing aside hungry children. Moments later he screamed.

Wild shouts of "Jumper!" roused everyone and for a few minutes Blue Ibis was a scene of chaos. Fabia had never heard of jumpers, which were apparently tiny but greatly feared spiders native to the flat lands. One must have come aboard with one of the tents, or perhaps the basket of roots... When the jumper had been hunted down and hammered into a small black stain, everyone could relax again. Except Perag.

He was thrashing on the deck boards, moaning in agony. Already his left arm was twice the size of the other and turning purple. His face was distorted—eyes bulging, lips everted, grossly swollen tongue protruding. Several of the Werists were shouting "Change!" at him, but he either could not hear or just could not change. He clawed a few times at his brass collar as if it were choking him. He did seem to be conscious, though.

"This is horrible!" Fabia said. She had gone to sit by Saltaja. "I can't pretend to like the man, but no one deserves to suffer so. Surely there must be a sanctuary we could take him to?"

The Queen of Shadows was watching her henchman's convulsions with the disapproval due a display of bad manners. "Sinurists will never treat Werists," she intoned. "If he could change form, he might be able to shake off the poison, but it would seem that he is unable to call on his god to help him."

"Perhaps we should pray for him."

"Perhaps we should," Saltaja agreed.

Fabia prayed: Mother of Death, do not release him yet. Make him suffer enough !

Eventually Cnurg took charge and ordered Perag trussed to restrain his convulsions; it took six men just to do that. The riverfolk shrugged and recommended keeping him doused to cool the fever. When his screams became too oppressive, Cnurg gagged him.

Flankleader Era in Redwing , on being informed of the calamity, assumed command and suspended all punishments.

No one spared Fabia a single suspicious glance.

♦

Late that day, for the third time on the journey, the convoy saw a sun wife, a bloated patch of brilliance some distance below the sun and equally impossible to look upon. Horth had explained to Fabia that sun wives were merely sunlight reflecting on the dome of Ocean, which was so far away now that it was lost in the blue of the sky. A sun wife needed only the right angle and unusually clear weather to form, he said.

But the riverfolk regarded sun wives as blessings from their gods, so they chanted a hymn of thanksgiving; the Werists countered with a paean to Weru, and one song led to another. Blue Ibis finished the day's journey with a rousing general singsong.

twenty-five

INGELD NARSDOR

stepped into the adytum, the holy of holies in the temple of Veslih, leaving Sansya to close the heavy door behind them. It was a cramped five-sided chamber with room for only a dozen or so worshipers around the bronze brazier in the center. The fire that lit it and kept it oppressively hot was even more sacred than the one in the tholos on the summit, for it was never extinguished and had been lit eons ago by holy Veslih Herself in the legendary city of Gal. Many layers of rich rugs padded the floor. The walls were very high and glazed in random patterns of cool green and blue tiles, with small openings under the roof for ventilation.

Only Tene, the most junior Daughter, was present, kneeling in vigil before the flames and bare to the waist. Ingeld moved across to join her, although not so near that they would have exactly the same viewing. She knelt, dropped the top of her gown, loosed her hair to fall in red-gold veils over her breasts, and bent her head in silent dedication and appeal for guidance. She sensed Sansya joining them on her other side. The only sound was a faint crackling of the logs.

Sansya had fetched her, claiming that she had seen the babe, a portent that up until now had been revealed only to Ingeld herself. She had first seen it back in the spring, and that was a long time for a vision to be so restricted. Even Tene had not discerned it, and her sight was brilliant—clearer and wider-ranging than Ingeld's had ever been.

When the ripples on her soul had calmed, she raised her eyes to contemplate the coals. A boat, of course, going away. That was Cutrath. She kept trying for a closer vision of him, but all she ever saw was the boat, and often only its sail. Almost instantly an ember shifted and the boat was gone, although he could not be aware of her sight or even of his own desire to block it. She did not try to overrule him. Cutrath had never been willing to share anything, even himself; the more he needed love, the more he rejected it. She was happy just to know that he was alive—and also surprised that he was still relevant to Kosord, for his brothers had disappeared from view long before they died.

Boats approaching, five of them. They could not be far away now. And for days now this little fleet had been linked to an ax; yes, there it was, a double-bladed ceremonial ax of silver with a long handle and shiny crescent edges. Ingeld knew who that was. She pointed.

"What do you see there?"

Tene had been close to trance—it was so easy for her—and she jumped. "My lady!... Where? Oh! A bird, my lady."

"What sort of bird?"

She gave a nervous little laugh. Tene was very beautiful, slender and fair and glowing with youth. Even in daylight she was gorgeous, and one glimpse of those high, rose-tipped breasts caressed by firelight would drive a man clean out of his mind. There was better to come, for in the three sixdays since she had made her final vows to Veslih, her flaxen hair had begun turning bronze and her eyes to gold. "A nighthawk, my lady. It is a white bird we have in the hills. It hunts by night, like an owl."

Ingeld smiled, mostly to herself. "Good omen or bad omen?"

Tene was obviously shocked to hear the light of Veslih speak of omens. "The peasants fear it, my lady."

"I don't blame them. I cannot see your bird, but what I do see is my own warning. How many days until she arrives?"

"Who? Er..." Tene looked back into the coals for a moment. "Four days, my lady. The feast of Ucr."