Farslayer's Story (26 page)

Soft Ripple had at length grown curious enough to risk the secret underwater passage for herself, choosing a time when the island was otherwise deserted. Overcome by curiosity, and perhaps by jealousy, she had forced herself to go on, despite the buzzing of minor powers that generally frightened away her mermaid sisters as well as the fisherfolk of both clans.

Later, her curiosity grew so great that she even dared the passage when she knew that Meg and Cosmo were in the grotto, and she had spied on them, unsuspected, as they lay together.

“We can sometimes see quite well from underwater, did you know that? And we can hear. I saw and heard the two of you, holding up the Sword and talking about it.”

Lady Megara turned finally. She changed her position so that she was looking down at the creature swimming in the water beside the boat.

Soft Ripple’s eyes were glittering as she spoke. “Then, later, I spied on Black Pearl and Cosmo. He was magician enough to fix it so she grew legs, if only for a little while. Did you know that? Legs, and what’s between them, too. That’s what he wanted from her. That’s what men always want. Yours wasn’t enough for him.”

“Fables and fairy stories,” said Lady Megara instantly. Her voice was as soft and certain as any that Zoltan had ever heard. “Cosmo told me about you. And about the other one, Black Pearl or whatever her name was. How he had been trying to help you, out of the goodness of his heart. How you became impatient and angry when he couldn’t cure you immediately, how you were starting to make up lies about him. Yes, yes indeed, he told me.” And the lady in the boat nodded and smiled, almost sweetly, at the accursed creature in the water.

“Oh no. Oh no. It’s you who lie.” The mermaid, swimming on her back, gazed up at the people in the boat, gazed at the Lady Megara in particular. It was as if the enormity of what the lady was saying held her hypnotized. “I talked to Cosmo, yes. Why shouldn’t I? I told him that I wanted legs, too. And he—he said he’d kill me if I tried to make trouble. But if I waited, and was patient, and said nothing to anyone, then maybe it would be my turn next. I knew what he meant, he meant after he was through with Black Pearl. Then he would see to it that I got legs. But I would only have had them for a few minutes at a time. Now I know he never really meant to help any of us…”

Lady Megara had long since ceased to listen. She said, to Mark and the others in the boats: “Cosmo showed me the Sword that he had hidden. He told me what it was going to mean for our future. Our families were both hopeless, lost in feuding. But that was not for us … the two of us were going to run away, taking the Sword with us. We would sell Farslayer in some great city, and that would give us the money we needed for the future.

The lady had grown animated in telling her story. “Let our families feud and kill each other if that was what they wanted. We would get away, and live our own lives, lives of peace and decency, somewhere else.”

“Of course”—and her animation fled—“we would have to avoid my father at all costs.”

“And then,” said Lady Yambu, “one night your father caught up with you.”

* * *

The two boats still made progress toward the south shore, while the mermaid continued to swim beside them. Now, reviving from the near silence of pain and despair, she once again shrieked curses against Megara and her beloved Cosmo.

Lady Meg continued to ignore her. But Zoltan, listening to Soft Ripple, believed what she said, or most of it, and thought that most of the other people in the boats believed her also. Zoltan wondered if Megara had ever suspected that her lover had been given to seducing mermaids. If so, Megara had put the idea firmly from her, and was not going to entertain it now.

Judging by Megara’s expression, she was still refusing to credit such outrageous allegations, or even to think about them. Refusing to admit that such creatures as lowly fishgirls could have any important role to play in anything. That anything about them could be of any importance to the important people of the world.

But the lady in the boat was more than willing to converse with Mark, the prince who would accept her and listen to her as an equal. “I loved him,” she repeated brightly, proudly, confidingly, as if she and Mark were the only people on the river. “We met on the island—the first time quite by accident. We loved each other from the first.”

Again the mermaid screamed something foul.

The lady ignored the fishgirl. “And then, Cosmo showed me the marvelous Sword that he had hidden here.”

At last, with an appearance of confidence, she deigned to answer the one who taunted from the water. “Yes, Cosmo told me that sometimes he caught mermaids. He was a kindhearted man, and he wanted to do something for the poor creatures. So sometimes he took them in one of his magical nets, for purposes of experimentation. It was all for their benefit. Of course I never asked their names. As for the idea that he might have had affairs with them…” That was obviously too absurd to deserve denial.

“He had Black Pearl. And he was going to have me next, I tell you!” Soft Ripple shrieked, her voice almost unintelligible now. Her small pale hands were pounding water into foam.

“But he never did, did he? I’m sorry for you, my dear.”

“He had Black Pearl, and—and—”

Soft Ripple’s voice broke, then collapsed completely in grotesque hatred, jealousy, suffering, and rage. And then suddenly she was only a young girl, weeping, drifting almost inertly beside the boat.

Mark asked the Lady Megara: “If I may, my lady, go back to the Sword for a moment. Where did Cosmo first obtain it? Did he ever tell you that?”

“He told me, freely, that he traded with a mermaid for it. And he had begun to fear that some of the creatures were developing their—their own grotesque feelings for him. That they were making up fantasies. I only know that he never…”

* * *

Lady Megara talked on, and now it was the mermaid’s turn not to listen. Soft Ripple had fallen quite silent, gliding on her back, looking up expressionlessly at the sky. But still she swam beside the boats, as if secured to them by some invisible chain.

The woman in the boat continued speaking. “But my father grew suspicious. He must have followed me, secretly, that night. It may be that some of my magical powers were beginning to fade, because I was no longer a virgin.” The Lady Megara made the declaration proudly.

“He came upon us as we lay together. He stood over us, hand on the hilt of his sword, thundering judgment, consigning us to our fates. I, the faithless, treacherous daughter, was going to spend the rest of my life in a White Temple. As for Cosmo, the Malolo seducer, a hideous death awaited him.

“But for once the judge was not allowed to enforce his sentence. He turned his back on us, and I suppose he was about to call out to his men to come in. But as soon as he did so, Cosmo pulled the great and beautiful Sword out of its hiding place, and stabbed him through the back.

“I had risen to my knees, about to try to plead with my father. When I saw Cosmo strike him, I could neither speak nor move. My father never uttered a sound. He turned partway around, with the Sword still in him, and looked at me with a great and terrible surprise; it was as if he thought that I had been the one to strike him. And in a way I had.”

“Now, for once, I saw him as someone who could be hurt, someone who could need my help. He tried to speak again, but he could not.

“And then, a moment later, he fell dead.”

Lady Yambu said something, so low that Zoltan could not make it out. Still the oarsmen rowed stolidly, and the boats advanced.

“Cosmo must have tried to talk to me after that. But I was paralyzed in shock.

“Perhaps I said something to him then, something terrible that made him leave me and run away. I don’t remember. I don’t remember. All I know is that I loved him, and I love him still.”

Megara suddenly slumped over in her seat, swaying as if she might be on the brink of complete collapse. Yambu soothed her, stoically and almost silently, with memories in her own mind of some similar experience herself.

Eventually Megara raised her head and spoke again. “The next thing I remember is that my father’s men had rushed into the grotto, and were trying to revive me. His body still lay there on the couch, or just beside it. Someone had already pulled out the Sword that had killed him, and I suppose had already used it again. When the men saw that my father had been struck down by Farslayer, they naturally assumed that it had come magically into the grotto from a distance and that one of the Malolo must have thrown it. Of course none of them blamed Cosmo, or even thought of him, I suppose. If they ever thought of him at all, he was not considered dangerous.

“And so began our night of the great slaughter but I knew no more about it. I knew nothing else very clearly for about a month.”

Soft Ripple, abstracted now, continued to swim silently beside the boat.

And Bonar, riding in the other boat from Megara, confirmed how, on that night of terror, Cosmo had returned from one of his magical night outings, at about the time of the first (as the Malolo thought) Sword-death.

It had been a night of vile weather, of sleet and wind and snow. As a result, almost all members of both rival families had been gathered around their respective hearths.

There had been quite a number of eager, excitable young Malolo men on hand that night, the flower of the family youth. The same thing across the river. And the leaders on both sides had been killed quite early that night.

Cosmo on coming home that night had of course said nothing about his having been on Magicians’ Island, or about the patriarch of their enemies having died there at his hand.

But Bonar could say something now about his cousin having gone to that island frequently.

He added that, on that night, Cosmo had tried to get the others to interrupt the cycle of killing. But as usual no one had paid him much attention. Cosmo had been no more highly respected by his own family than he was by their enemies. He was looked on as a failed magician, who had not been very good at anything else, either. His pleas and warnings on the night of killing had been scorned and disregarded.

Then the Sword had struck again—for what was to seem to others the last time that night—coming in through the stone walls of the Malolo manor and killing someone.

This time Cosmo had been first on the scene and had drawn the weapon from the corpse. But instead of striking back in his turn, like a true Malolo, he had seized Farslayer and run out into the night with it.

Soon the remaining family members, few, bereaved, and bewildered, discovered that he’d reclaimed the mount he’d recently left in the stables, and galloped off, the gods knew where.

Before leaving he’d said something, a few words to a stablehand, that indicated he felt responsible for some reason for the slaughter that had now overtaken his own family.

“We cannot be sure what he was thinking. But it seems that he meant to take the Sword somewhere where it could do no harm.”

“A goal with which I can feel some sympathy,” said Prince Mark. “In fact I can remember trying to do something like that once myself. When I was very young.”

The two boats moved on steadily toward the south shore, where Mark and his friends were determined to find the hermit Gelimer.

Chapter Eighteen

H
issarlik, sitting on his high chair in his great hall and enjoying a solitary meal, suddenly gave a great shriek, and tumbled writhing to the floor.

Three servants, who were the only people in the room with the clan chief at the moment, became aware at that same moment of the return of a terrible visitor: the same Sword that a month ago had well-nigh depopulated the house of its owners and masters.

This time the onlookers’ first glimpse of the weapon came as it fell clashing on the floor beside their wounded Tyrant. Hissarlik’s clothes and the floor around him were being drenched in a steady outpouring of his blood.

Two of the servants rushed immediately to the assistance of the Tyrant. In moving the Sword out of the way, they saw that it held, impaled near its tip, a rather peculiar-looking leather wallet. The wallet was heavily spattered with Hissarlik’s blood; and it was not immediately recognizable as leather, having curled up into a dry and lifeless-looking scrap of what looked like parchment.

Hissarlik was not yet dead. In fact he was not even completely disabled, though his side had been deeply gashed and blood poured from his wound. Ashen-faced, he demanded to be helped to rise. With a servant’s help he got himself up on his shaky knees, and then by dint of grasping another servant’s arm, hauled himself to his feet. Then, almost falling again, he bent over with difficulty to grasp the deadly Sword by its black hilt and pick it up.

The third of the servants present, who for some days now had been secretly in the pay of Tigris, had already dashed out of the room to tell her newest employer what had happened.

Meanwhile, Hissarlik, even though his eyes were glazing, had shaken free of the arms that supported him. He was holding the Sword’s hilt with two hands now, and doing his staggering best to spin around.

He muttered a name, and threw the Sword, which vanished in a flash through the stone walls of the room, as magically as it had come in through them. A moment later, the latest wielder of the Sword of Vengeance had fallen again, to lie at full length on the floor. Hissarlik’s eyes were glazing more rapidly now.

A door banged open. Tigris, who had been unable to stay with him at every moment, came rushing in angrily from two rooms away. She was moments too late to witness Farslayer’s latest departure.

“Where is the Sword? What have you done with it? You fool, you’ve thrown it away, haven’t you!” In a controlled rage, she knelt beside the fallen man. “Did I hear you cry out a name? That of the target, it must have been!”

The dying Hissarlik, his side still spouting blood, was trying to focus his eyes on the face of Tigris as she bent over him. He was trying to tell her something that seemed to him to be of great importance.