Hunting the White Witch Read online

  The sailors gave off a shuddering murmur.

  Charpon gifted Ki a second blow.

  “My crew has gone mad. Maggots in the head. There is nothing in the sea. Take this worm and shackle him below till the fit soaks out of him. He shall not feed or drink till he’s sane again.”

  But, as they were taking the unfortunate Ki away, another of the watch shouted. Charpon’s head jerked up. The sailors clustered at the rail, gabbling. This time, no sorcery. Two men, no doubt wrecked survivors of the storm, floating in the troughs, one splashing feebly to attract attention.

  Charpon nodded. He did not see survivors but replacement oarsmen, if they lived. Some recompense, after all, to be measured on the clicking abacus in his head.

  * * *

  Knowing I might cross the water afoot, reach the vessel, observe some two hundred men stricken on their faces with alarm, or else riotous and searching out weapons with which to attack me, I had preferred discovery in the image of a helpless destitute. I had heard the man scream his terror from the side, and that had been warning enough. I lay down in the sea, and Long-Eye with me. Levitation had surmounted the need to swim. I buoyed us up and let the swells drift us toward the blue ship.

  At length ropes were thrown us. We threshed and floundered and were dragged up the iron-wood planking, over the picture-writing of the galley’s name, onto the deck.

  Charpon’s black shadow fell on us.

  He was a tall man, the “New” conqueror blood showing in his height, huge bones, and russet skin. His hair was clipped and oiled until it resembled a cap of black lacquer. His teeth were white but unevenly set, like shards stuck haphazardly into cement. In his left ear hung a long, swinging earring in the shape of a golden picture symbol—the sign of Masrimas, the fire-god.

  Charpon prodded me with the handle of his whip.

  “Strong doss,” he said, “to have lasted the storm. We shall see.” He fingered his earring and said to me, “Speak Masrian?”

  “Some,” I answered slowly, not wishing to seem too proficient, though Masrian came as easily to me as the other languages I had met. It was the conqueror tongue named, like the conqueror race, for their god. Charpon nodded at Long-Eye. “No,” I said. “He is just my servant.”

  Charpon smiled dismissively. My days of possessing servants were obviously numbered.

  “Where do you come from?”

  I said, “Northward, and something westward.”

  “Beyond the wall of rock?”

  I remembered the great cliffs across the sea. Probably the traders had heard of northlands, but had not gone so far for centuries.

  “Yes. The shore of ancient cities.”

  “Ah.” He seemed to recognize it, contemptuously. No doubt he knew little of it, poor trading land, a jumble of barbaric tribes and ruins.

  I could smell his rough cunning, his shrewd greed, foresaw, with no recourse to magic, that he would use me where and how he reckoned most profitable. And I wondered briefly if I could read his mind—I did not know my limits, my power might stretch to anything. Yet I shrank from that ultimate intrusion, that floundering among the swamps and sewers of another’s brain, and did not attempt the feat. Reluctant as I was, I hardly think I could have managed it in any case.

  Charpon did not seem inclined to question my grasp of the Masrian language. Probably he believed the whole world should speak it, to the greater glory of his illegitimate sires. He tapped with the whip handle, and a sailor brought me a pot of water with some bitter alcohol mixed in it. No offering was given Long-Eye; when I shared the ration with him, Charpon seemed tickled.

  “We can’t conduct you home,” he said to me. “We make for the Sun’s Road, the way to the capital of the south. You’d best come with us. It will broaden your experience, sir.” He was attempting polite, sarcastic humor. His four seconds, well-dressed bullies, one missing an eye, grunted.

  “I agree to that, but I can’t pay you,” I said. “Perhaps I can work my passage?”

  “Oh, indeed you shall. But first, come to the ship-house, sir, and share my dinner.”

  His smiling and unlikely courtesy would have warned the slowest fool of tricks in the offing. Yet, in the capacity of intimidated flotsam, everything lost, adrift on his clemency, I thanked him and followed him, companioned by his bully boys, Long-Eye a pace behind me.

  The ship-house lay aft, constructed of iron-wood and painted indigo, but the door was pure wrought iron with brass fitments. I could hardly resist the idea such a door had mutiny in mind. Inside was a great beamed room with plush couches built in along the walls, and piled with spotted and striped pelts, and cushions and drapes better suited to a brothel. A luxurious twist to Charpon’s granite. I could picture the master lolling at his leisure, the incense burners smoking and his whip to hand, ready for action of one kind or another.

  The obligatory statuette of Masrimas, gilded bronze, fine work, stood in an alcove looking on with eyes of nacre shell, a flame fluttering before it.

  We sat at Charpon’s table, I and the four seconds; Long-Eye he let crouch near my chair on the rugs. Three youths brought the food. Conscripted in childhood for this hell of a life, they were bound to it for ten years by Masrian law unless they were sharp and desperate enough to run away in some port. Two were handsome under their dirt, and one knew his luck. He flirted a little, surreptitiously, with the Lauw-yess, brushing the master’s arm with his body as he set down the platters in their scoops. Charpon pushed him aside, as if irritated by the proximity, but he was taking note. The boy was clever, if he could make it last. Though small and slight, of the old Hessek blood to judge by his sour-pale complexion, he had already got a Masrian name: Melkir. He looked at me with cultivated scorn, the precariously safe dissociating himself from the damned.

  Birds had fallen part-dead on the ship’s deck when the vessel entered the storm’s eye. The sailors had wrung their necks and now served them up stewed. The worshipers of the Flame did not sully fire by putting carcasses in it to cook; only meat boiled in water in a pot, or baked in a container, was allowed, thus keeping it the required distance from the god.

  Charpon urged me to gorge, for, as ever, I ate sparingly; he told me I must get back my strength. Yet, he remarked, I was certainly no weakling to have survived; my servant, too. How long had I been in the water? I told him some lie of the boat’s capsizing later than it had. Still he marveled. Most men, this much in the sea, would be spoiled for anything. Masrimas had blessed me and preserved me for the ship.

  I asked him, casually, what work I might do about the galley to recompense him. He supposed me scared, no doubt, trying to learn my destiny by degrees. He said I should not do common crew work. Then I knew for sure he meant me for the rowers’ deck.

  I turned and said to Long-Eye in the tongue of the Dark People, “He intends us to embrace the oar. Watch him.”

  Charpon said decidedly, “You will speak Masrian.”

  “My servant speaks only his own language.”

  “No matter. It’s better you do as I say.”

  His bullies laughed. One said to me, “You must have been a fine prince among the barbarians. Did you save any jewels from your skiff?”

  I told the man I had nothing. Another put a hand into my hair.

  “There’s always this. If the young barbarian lord were to shear his fleece, there’s many an old whore in Bar-Ibithni would pay a gold chain for a wig of it.”

  I moved slightly to look at this man—his name was Kochus—as he fondled me. His eyes widened. He snatched his hand off as if he had been burned and his face went gray. The rest were drinking and never noticed it.

  Since the miracle in the sea, my abilities seemed loosened in the sheath, more ready. I was confronted by choices. I could mesmerize the roomful of villains, kill or stun them with a white energy of my brain, or perform some other magician’s trick of terror to set th
em gaping with fear.

  Feeling myself omnipotent, with leisure to spare, was my foolishness. A sudden scuffle from behind alerted me, but too late. Something struck me on the skull, hard enough to jar my brains.

  I was sufficiently aware, however, to realize I was going to the below-decks after all, a substitute for some storm-death.

  I was dragged. A hatch was pulled up, some words were exchanged regarding new flesh for dead flesh. I was lowered and left to lie in a stinking dark, the anus of despair. The oarsmen stretched in corpse-sleep, groaning and mewing as they rowed in their dreams. Long-Eye tumbled close to me. The hatch slammed shut.

  * * *

  After a while, lamplight shone through my lids. The Overseer of Oars was bending above me, together with the Drummer—the man whose task it was to beat out time for the oar-strokes. A pace behind them stood one of the two “Comforters,” those essentials of any slave galley, their work being to patrol the ramp between the rowing benches, and “comfort,” with their flails, any who fell behind in the labor. Compared to those flails, Charpon’s whip was a velvet ribbon. Every instrument had three strings to it of corded leather toothed with iron spikes. My eyes were shut and my head clamored; I formed a cerebral rather than a physical picture of these men through their mutterings and movements, and later from my own experience. It was partly disappointing to me to find them so exactly predictable. Like a child’s drawing of a monster, each was inevitably what one would expect, barely human, a perfect prototype of depraved viciousness and myopic ignorance.

  “This one is very strong,” the Overseer remarked, kneading me like a hard dough.

  The Drummer said indifferently, “They don’t always last, Overseer, even the strong ones.”

  Somewhere, one of the rowers called out indistinctly for water, in a dream. There was the crack of a flail. The nearest Comforter laughed.

  Long-Eye was examined next, and the same words were brought out. Presented with a line of fifty unconscious potential rowers, no doubt they would have mouthed the inanities over and over: This one strong. Even strong ones don’t last.

  Two Comforters picked me up. They handled me indifferently, without interest since I was not yet properly aware, alive, receptive, the love affair not yet begun between us. The tough, stubborn slaves they liked the best, the men who flung around snarling at the flails, struggling in their shackles, furious to get free and kill the tormentor, to no avail.

  Soon enough, they found an empty place for me.

  A man was lying under the bench in his chains, his chest rustily heaving and creaking as he slept. His dead mate had been unbolted and got rid of some hours ago.

  The reek from the benches was thick as mud in the nostrils.

  The Comforter bent near, fixing the irons to my legs, and securing these in turn to the bench. Both limbs were constrained. Later, an iron girdle about my belly would link me with the oar itself.

  Before he went away up the ramp, one of the Comforters struck me across the back that I might wake to the full taste of my new life. I was returning fast to myself now, and reaching upward from my thought, healed the stripe immediately, which he did not witness in the gloom.

  The shackles were of tempered blue iron, alcum as they call it in the northlands. I felt them over gently, wondering, as ever, if I could or could not. Then the rivets opened like warm putty. I laughed at my mage-craft softly as I lay under the bench, and the sound of the laugh, unfamiliar to the man beside me, my oar-mate, roused him.

  To judge from his cries, his brain had been full of a dream of death, drowning in cold seas, weighted to the inescapable intestine of the sinking ship. He was a Seemase, sallow-pale and with curdled black hair of the Old Blood, like wool. He had a year of life left in him, and barely that. He looked at me, coming to himself, with a malicious pity, sorry another should share his rotten fate, and glad of it, too.

  “Luck wasn’t with you,” he said to me, speaking the argot of the seaways, part Masrian, part Hessek, part ten or so ancient tongues.

  “Perhaps it’s with you, then. How do I call you?”

  “Call me,” he repeated. He coughed and spit to clear his lungs. “I was called Lyo once. Where did they catch you?” he added listlessly. He was not curious, this being merely a ritual, the new victim who must be questioned on a reflex.

  I said, “They didn’t catch me, Lyo. See.” I showed him the broken chains about my ankles. The alcum-iron looked melted.

  He peered, then had to cough and gargle up more phlegm before he said, “Did you bribe them not to fetter you? They will still do it.”

  I lifted a piece of the chain in my fingers; it fell apart in front of his eyes. He blinked, trying to puzzle around the thing.

  “Should you like to be free, Lyo?”

  “Free,” he said. He looked at me, then at the piece of chain. He coughed.

  “You’re sick,” I said. “Two months, and you will bleed in the lungs.” Something went over his face, the thought of the oar in a high sea, his ribs broken, a tearing in his chest like cloth. His dull gaze flickered up into fright, then faded out.

  “Death’s no stranger. Let him come. Are you Death?”

  I reached over and put my hand on his belly. The sickness swirled up like a serpent trapped under a stick. He choked and caught his breath, and jerked away from me in terror. He gasped and put his palms over his face.

  “Say what you feel,” I said to him.

  Presently he said quietly, “You are God.”

  “And what god is that?”

  “Whichever you say.”

  “You will call me Vazkor,” I said.

  “What have you done to me?”

  “I have cured your lungs.”

  “Free me,” he said, “free me, and you can have my life.”

  “My thanks. You offer what is already mine to take.”

  He kept his palms over his face. It was a ritual gesture of humility before the Infinite.

  “Pretend nothing has happened between us,” I said. “Later, you shall go free.”

  He lay back, weakened by the shock of healed strength flowing through him. It was strange to work a magic this vital, without even a sense of pity or sympathy having moved me.

  I was cautious now, and did nothing further. Shortly a Comforter found me still in my place, unchained. He called one of his fellows. Next, the Overseer came, and shouted like a bad and unconvincing actor that they should know better than to shackle a man with corroded bonds. I vacantly gazed at them as they brought fresh fetters and did the work anew. Lyo laughed and a flail slashed him across the neck.

  Not long after, the order came to resume oars.

  The Hyacinth Vineyard was turning home.

  South, no longer east. As I had seen in that flash of precognition on the island, the ship was the fate that would carry me toward my goal. I would find her in the south, then, maybe even in this city they named Bar-Ibithni, where they worshiped the god of fire. What did she do there? Or should I have to go farther to find Uastis Reincarnate, my mother?

  Absorbed in this reflection, I made no effort to escape the oar. It was sufficient to know I could get loose when I wished. Besides, I was young and proud, and full again of my vow of hate, and somehow that mood was fitted to those huge, grinding pulls and thrusts upon a blade of iron and wood.

  You row from the calf to the groin, from the groin to the pit of the skull. Only the feet rest easy, and then not always. A boy put to the labor when he is still growing will emerge, if emerge he ever does, with the body of a toad, a vast chest and arms and a goblin’s squat, tapering lower limbs. Here and there about Bar-Ibithni you might see such a man, survivor by incredible luck of a shipwreck or sea battle between pirates, who had subsequently bought himself off by bribery of a priest in some Temple of Sanctuary.

  Yet the toil was nothing to me. I could have carried the enormous
oar alone and made a jest of it, and later did.

  Presently a Comforter came by to check my fetters, currently intact. He gave a grunt, stepped back, and, for mere sport, raised his flail. I turned and looked in his pupils.

  “You should know better, dog, than to pick up snakes.”

  A lightning of fear flickered in muddy irises. He felt the flail writhe in his hand, and let it fall with a cry.

  “Poor dog,” I said, “you are sick. Go vomit, dog, till you are dry.”

  He lurched about, clutching his belly, and staggered off in the growing gloom and began to puke. Lyo giggled excitedly.

  Judging a disturbance, another of the Comforters materialized at my elbow.

  “Give me water,” I called to him, “water, for your god’s sake.”

  He grinned and stared me in the eye, and made to beat me, and lashed himself across the face instead. He screamed with pain and stumbled to his knees.

  “Now you will give me water,” I said. I put my palm on his shoulder, keeping the oar going easily single-armed. He took his hand from his injured face. “Water in a cup,” I said.

  He crawled away, and returned with an iron bowl, his own, filled with mixed water and grain-liquor. I drank, and gave him the cup back with a bow. Bloody, he shambled to his station, apparently unaware of his hurt.

  The Drummer sat drumming the time of the strokes, a moron, not seeing. The Overseer was above.

  Tension had tightened over the rowing lines. The oar does not deal kindly with the mental process; only a few had taken in what had occurred. Even so, a febrile alertness had spread like a new smell through the deck, and a rampant, gnawing memory of the first aspirations of the slave—mutiny, rebellion: freedom. The inexorable pendulum had faltered. Not one of them but did not sense that much, and fasten on it with a cloudy prayer for change to whatever gods they still forgave and reverenced.

  And none of us missed a stroke.

  3

  It would be a journey of seventeen days, so they reckoned, to regain the ship-roads and reach the city, for they had been in the outermost regions of their travels when the hurricane caught them. Seventeen days, too, was an estimation that took into account continuous use of full sail and oar-power together. For this, each rower worked a third of a day alone at the big pole and one third in harness with his mate. An hour following the sunset, when the quarter-lighted black of the underdeck thickened to an unbelievable second depth of darkness, a portion of sleep was allowed, and the slaves tumbled down into that abysmal, muttering unconsciousness by which any man, having once heard it, could tell such a spot blindfold ever after. At the midnight bell, the flails would rouse the lines again to toil in shifts till sunup.