Magesong (11 page)

Reyin lay ill for three days.  It seemed that each time he
opened his eyes, Farlo stood at his side.  On the fourth night, when the
nightmare of pain was finally played out, he found himself able to speak.

"On the ship?" he asked weakly.

Farlo nodded.  He looked like he hadn't slept in a week. 
"A few days from the port of Ava, if you believe the sailing master.”

"Not chained below, then?"

"No, of course not.  Chained down in the hold?  You've
been having delirium dreams is what."

That morning, when Reyin walked shakily out to lean on the
starboard rail, he clutched the Heartleech in his fist.  After a minute of
watching the foam on the water, he dropped it into the ocean.

At noon, a green and yellow haze came into sight.  This was
the Isle of Aessia, huge, over two hundred leagues across.  Somewhere ahead on
its southwest shore stood the city of Ava, birthplace of the Avic language, the
center from which spread the art and philosophy of an entire hemisphere.  The
Cycle of Ice had reduced the beauty of that ancient civilization to mere
legend, but for anyone born of the Avic culture, for all of those whose first
words were in its lyrical tongue, Ava mirrored their very being.

Tarradid
wore interminably to the south in shifting
winds that afternoon.  But the crew's spirit was good, and someone started a
chantey, with everyone joining in as the dog watches changed.  Even Reime
stopped speaking of Tolan's disappearance, saying, "What's it matter?  He
was a horse's arse, anyway."  Two mornings later, as the last crescent
moon of spring set beyond the Western Sea, the Captain announced that they
would make their destination before noon.

By midmorning the hills above Ava came into view, and
everyone stayed on deck watching them edge closer as the minutes passed.  When
he could see the ivory towers of the old palace, standing tiny as toothpicks on
the tallest hill inside the city, Reyin went below to fetch Farlo.

He sat alone on an overturned bucket, stropping his razor,
soap and brush in a cup beside him.  He ran his hand along the dark bristle of
his newly-grown hair.

"No," Reyin said, suddenly furious.  "No, you
are not going to do that."

Farlo, struck dumb with surprise, said nothing at first. 
Then he said, "You don't understand — "

Reyin cut him off savagely.  "Yes I do.  I understand
that you have been worse than useless on this voyage, that you nearly got us
thrown in prison just because you had to prove you could lick that Tolan
fellow.  And I'm paying your way with money that I'll need later."

Farlo started to rise, the dark look coming fast, but Reyin,
too angry to stop and think, took one long stride toward him, throwing out his
left hand.

"Listen!" he commanded, unconsciously speaking the
Essian tongue.  Farlo did not move, and Reyin hardly paused.

"Now.  What you are going to do is:  let you hair grow,
trim your beard, stop picking fights, stop eyeing people with suspicion, stop
attracting attention to yourself, and try to act like everyone else or I'll
dump you like dirty bath-water.  You have no idea what I did for you, what that
did to me.  I should have slipped away without you in the first place.  I
should have left you back in — "

Then the vision of the fate of Lorendal came to him
unbidden, Syliva looking gaunt and afraid, Kestrin lying near death, and his
rage was undone.  He took a breath and shuffled out into the bright sunlight,
leaving Farlo in silence.

Tarradid
entered the harbor under a dying breeze, and
in the end they had to warp the ship up to the quays.  Reyin and Farlo stepped
off the gangplank in the heat of midday, glad to have seen the last of that
ship.

It was Fireday.  The market fair would be in full bustle
down on the green across from The Peacock's Tale.  Reyin guided Farlo through
an archway close by on Herrafort Street, climbing two short flights of stairs
to an unmarked door.  The old man did not remember him, but he got the usual
price for the room anyway.

Reyin threw on his minstrel colors and told Farlo, "I'm
going out to make some coin.  Stay put and someone will bring you dinner in a
little while."

As he expected, The Peacock's Tale couldn't hold half the
fair-goers seeking refreshment there, and most of them overflowed onto the
front street.  Reyin looked out across the green.  In the open spaces between
clusters of tents and stalls, the local singers, acrobats, and fakirs (dressed
in mysterious garb) worked the crowd from one end to the other.  Playing on the
fairground among the afternoon strollers would be more pleasant, but the coin
was with the drinkers.  Rougher work, sure — drunks could get really ugly — you
just needed quickness afoot and the will to keep smiling.  He clicked his heels,
pasted some merriment onto his face, and plunged right into the nose painters
with a "hey nonny no."

His performance felt stilted.  He had done it too many times
and it was dry.  No old time thrill at being the flashing showman, shiny
pennies arcing through sunlight as they fell towards his hat.  He didn't even
feel nostalgia for the trusty old tunes that were simple to play and guaranteed
to please.  A long-term weariness began to settle upon him; he was travel-worn
and wanted to go home.  Where would that be?  Ty'kojin's cabin on the shoulder
of Wind Peak, he supposed.  Certainly not Kandin.

The old discipline held him up, so he found himself making
that same bawdy jest to the gentleman or blowing that practiced not-so-chaste
kiss to the lady.  When a pair of constables arrived with green feathers in
their caps and wooden staves in their hands, Reyin, without thinking, used the
same line he had said to hundreds of policemen at dozens of fairs: 
"Sorry, I've already sung all the filthy songs I know, but if you want
I'll do a chorus of The Old Knottin' Trail."  And of course the laugh
stopped the performance as it had always done, and of course the constables
smiled good-naturedly, slightly self-conscious because they had interrupted
everyone's good time, and of course as there was no trouble here they drifted
away without causing any themselves.

The sunset lingered, and in the lull of twilight come at
last, Reyin bowed away from the street in front of The Peacock's Tale to find a
quiet place on the green to count his hatful of pennies.  The light failing,
the coins dirty, his best guess was that he had nearly four kandar's worth.  He
had done really well.  That was as much as he ever made in one day.

The light in the western sky
dimmed to a shimmering blue glow, and the merchants who wished to stay and hawk
a few more wares to the trickle of late-comers produced lanterns and hung them
from tent poles.  Those artisans who had had enough bartering for the day
rolled up their awnings and packed goods into lock-boxes.  Quiet fell in waves
across the green, and Reyin found himself looking up.  The palace of the
ancient kings of Ava stood on a hill only a few blocks away.  A light appeared,
fading quickly to darkness, in a lower window of one of the ivory towers, then
surged to life in the next window up, then dark, then light again one level
higher.  Someone climbing the tower, thought Reyin.  The palace was old and
weather-worn, even dilapidated and crumbling in a few places.  Certainly no one
but a caretaker lived there.  Artemes had told him that a great library lay in
vaults deep beneath the towers of the old kings, that it contained the lore of
the origins of civilization and the history of the time before the Cycle of
Ice.  It was there, he had said, for anyone who knew how to read, but only a
few old scholars had ever done so.  As he stood there in deepening silence,
Reyin felt his own breast grow heavy, and he took up his strings and sang The
Lament of the Knights of the Flame.  Low and slow, he sang it only for himself.

When they entered their stateroom on the galleon, Reyin
tossed his duffle into the corner and slid himself into the lower bunk,
propping his head up with the pillows.

"Feather mattress," he said smugly.

Farlo simply stared at the oak paneling, the brass fittings
on the porthole, the leather-bound sea chest, the porcelain hand-bowl, and the
solid bunk beds with fine down comforters.

"I'd rather have a hammock," Farlo mumbled,
"and you'll wish for the same if we hit heavy seas."

Farlo had done as Reyin demanded, saying little and staying
out of sight.  He had even achieved a style of sorts with his beard, and had
taken to wearing a workman's cap when he had to go out.  But Reyin refused to
consider another working passage.  Taking the galleon was a lavish expense,
leaving them little for Mira-Delvin, but this way Farlo could keep to himself
and they would hopefully have an uneventful crossing to the port of Javian.

The day of their departure from Ava proved hot and breezy,
the night mild and moonlit.  Reyin sat on the upper bunk plucking at his
mandolin, picking out the melody of the Song of Returning.  Farlo came in from
an hour on deck.

"There," Reyin said, "I've finished it."

Farlo rolled into the lower bed.  "It's about time.  You've
been playing that thing all day."

"I found that I was a little out of practice back there
in Ava, but no, that's not what I meant.  I've finished translating the Song of
Returning into Avic.  I was thinking of making it into a ballad."

"You mean to play on the street for money?"

"Certainly not.  I'd sing it only at special times for
those who might understand."

After a long silence Farlo said, "Go ahead then, sing
it for me."

Reyin strummed gently, a rhythm
with the voice of the nightly fire where they had gathered, then came the
whisper of the wind in the mountains.  He sang:

The day of her return is nigh.

Though unseen by mortal sight,

A hand turns the spinning wheel

of the starry night sky.

For she who heals old winter's scars,

We await, We await.

For she who gives us life anew,

We await on the wheel of life.

The springtime comes on cloud-swept wings.

We rest like seeds deep in the earth.

The Spirit now flows forth again

with light, with warmth, with birth.

For she who lives in land and sea,

We await, We await.

For she who gives us life anew,

We await on the stone of time
.

Farlo cleared his throat quietly.  "Not bad," he
said.  "I want you to understand something.  I'm not the best judge of
music on the ocean, but I think you're a first rate minstrel — 'bout the best I
ever seen just out on the street.  And I could be wrong about all this so there
you are, and I have to say . . . that was a real nice tune with poetic words
and all, but you should leave that song to itself.  It should be sung just how
you learned it."

"I only wanted to share it with my friends," Reyin
said.  "I want them to understand it without having to learn
Pallenor."

"And that's my point.  Your words aren't even half
right because many of the Pallenor words can't be translated into Avic or any
other language.  It doesn't matter if they understand the words or not.  The
song is not for thinking.  It's for feeling."

"I didn't think my song was that bad."

"It's not.  Share it.  Do what you will.  Like I said,
I could be wrong."

On the eighth day of the southern crossing, they sighted the
city of Javian at the far side of a wide inlet.  Beyond the turrets of in-town
villas and the peaked domes of temples, the palace of the Jakavian royal family
rose out of a haze made by ten thousand cooking fires.  The harbor was deep. 
The largest galleon could be brought right alongside the huge masonry quay
which ran with the harbor street for a quarter of a league.

The capital city of Jakavia was by no means the oldest. 
Though their civilization was near as old as the Aessians, the Jakavian people
had suffered an interregnum of constant warfare while the northern states
endured the Cycle of Ice.  When it ended, the ancient capital of Mira-Delvin
lay crumbling on the southern coast, and the new royal city had begun rising on
the north shore.

Reyin and Farlo stayed their first night in a cheap
waterfront hostel, where five pennies apiece bought a bowl of soupy rice and a
straw mat in room full of smelly strangers.  They were rewarded the next
morning with painful diarrhea.

"We'll have to take the overland," Reyin said when
there was nothing left inside him but cramps, and he could walk down the
street.  "It will get us to Mira-Delvin in five days."

"Five days stuck in a crowded coach with the fat
well-to-do."

"Don't worry, they'll make you ride on top
anyway."

"How we gonna eat?  The overland will cost all the
monies we have."

"More than that, actually," Reyin said with a sour
look.  "I'm going to sell my pistol."

Farlo‘s mouth fell open.  "You can't mean that.  We'll certainly
need it."

"I'm not planning to commit robbery."

"Well that is just what we might have to do — have you
thought of that?  You think someone sails a thousand leagues to find a treasure
and gives it up?  What are you planning on doing, just asking for it
back?"  Farlo almost shouted now, and Reyin led him into the shade of a
narrow alley.  "What are you thinking?  Tell me.  What are you going to do
when we find it?"

"I don't know."

"Oh that's well done, that is."

"I told you before we started," Reyin said evenly,
"that it might not be possible to retrieve this Elemental Spirit.  I told
you that I may not even be able to find it.  But whatever we do, we will do it
without firearms and without harming anyone.  Right now, I'm going to sell this
damned pistol and buy two tickets for tomorrow's coach.  That's what I'm going
to do right now."