"Who were those people? What happens now?" Smith asked, steering downriver.
The lordling did not reply, but steadied himself on his feet with Willowspear's help. He brushed himself off and marched aft to Cutt, Crish, and Stabb. By the time he reached them he was swaggering.
"Now, boys, that's enough! What good will shouting do?" he demanded.
They fell silent at once and turned to him meekly, and Smith was astonished to see their hideous faces wet with tears.
"Now we are no longer a set of four, Master," said Cutt.
"Of course you are. Look! I've caught old Strangel right here." Lord Ermenwyr held up a button he'd plucked from his waistcoat. "See? There's his living soul. I'll put it in a new body as soon as ever we're home. But what does he need now?"
The demons stared at him, blank. Then they looked at one another, blanker still.
"Revenge!"
Lord Ermenwyr told them. "Lots of bloody and terrible revenge! And who's going to be the hideous force that dishes it out, eh?"
"...Us?" Stabb's eyes lit again, and so did Cutt's and so did the eyes of Crish.
"Yes!" Lord Ermenwyr sang, prancing back and forth before them. "Yes, you! Kill, kill, kill, kill! You're going to break heads! You're going to rip off limbs! You're going to do amusing things with entrails!"
"Kill, kill, kill!" the demons chanted, lurching from foot to foot, and the deck boomed under their feet.
"Happy, happy, happy!"
"Happy, happy, happy!"
The planks creaked alarmingly.
"Kill, kill, kill!"
"Kill, kill, kill!"
A while later they had come about and were steaming back up the river again, at their best speed.
"Half a point starboard!" Smith called down from the masthead. Below him, Willowspear at the helm steered to his direction cautiously, glancing now and then at the backs of his hands, where STARBOARD was chalked on the right and PORT on the left. On either side stood Cutt and Crish, shielding him each with a stateroom door removed from its hinges. Lord Ermenwyr sat behind him in a folding chair, shadowed over by Stabb with yet a third door. The lordling had his smoking tube out, but its barrel was loaded with poison darts gleaned from the deck, and he rolled it in his fingers and glared at the forest gliding past.
They drew level with the place where they had been attacked, and there was the cut cable trailing in the water; but of their assailants there was no sign.
"Two points to port," Smith advised, and peered ahead.
The fogbanks of the coast lay far behind them; the air was clear and bright as a candle flame. From his high seat he could see forest rolling away for miles, thinning to yellow savanna far to the north and east, and he knew that the grain country of Troon was out beyond there. Westward the land rose gradually to a mountain range that paralleled the river. Far ahead, nearly over the curve of the world perhaps, the mountains got quite sharp, with a pallor nastily suggestive of snow though it was high summer.
And in all that great distance he could see no house, no smoke of encampments, no castle wall or city wall, and no other ship on the wide river. He saw no green men, either; but he knew they would not let themselves be seen.
"One point to starboard," he cried, and his voice fell into vast silence.
By evening they had gone far enough, fast enough, for Smith to judge it safe to drop anchor off an island in the middle of the river. Crish and Stabb were left on deck to keep watch, and Curt blocked the companionway like a landslide.
"This is
a good
wine," Lord Ermenwyr remarked, emerging from the galley with a dusty bottle. "Nice to know there are still a few honest merchants left, eh?"
Smith sighed, warming his hands at the little stove.. He looked around the saloon. It was quite elegant. More polished brass and nautical curtains, bulkheads paneled in expensive woods, not one whiff of mildew. And nothing useful. No weapons other than in potential: a couple of pointless works of art in one corner, a dolphin and a seagull cast in bronze, slightly larger than life and heavy enough to kill somebody with. They didn't suit Smith's tastes, as art. He preferred mermaid motifs himself, especially mermaids with fine big bosoms like--
"Here," said Lord Ermenwyr, pressing on him a stoneware cup of black wine. "A good stiff drink's what you want, Smith."
"I'll tell you what I want," Smith replied, taking the cup and setting it down. "I want to know who killed Strangel."
Lord Ermenwyr shifted in his seat.
"He isn't really dead," he said hastily. "Not as we think of being dead. Really. With demons, you see--"
"They were the Steadfast Orphans," said Willowspear. "Those of our people who refused to accept the Lady's marriage and ... and subsequent offspring. They are an order of fighters, Smith. They will kill if they believe it's justified."
"Like Flowering Reed," Lord Ermenwyr explained. "He was one of them."
"Hell," said Smith, with feeling. "Are they after you again?"
After an awkward pause, Lord Ermenwyr said, "I don't think so. They might have been on their way to Hlinjerith."
Smith thought of the pleading man on the landing, and his horror registered on his face.
"They wouldn't harm those men," Willowspear assured him. "Especially not if they were ill. The Orphans are stubborn and intolerant and--and bigoted, but they never attack unless they are attacked first."
"So as to have the moral edge," sneered Lord Ermenwyr. "Mind you, they have no difficulty hiring someone else to kill for them. And they'll go to great lengths to arrange 'accidents,' the hypocritical bastards."
"Strangel charged them, so they took him out," said Smith. "All right. But what'd they go after me for?"
"I think they'd probably spotted me on deck by then," the lordling replied, "and it's open season on me all year round, you know, what with me being an Abomination and all."
"But they worship your mother, don't they?" Smith knitted his brows. "I've never understood why they think she won't mind if they murder her children."
"They worship Her as a sacred virgin," Willowspear explained. "And it is thought that Her ... defilement, hm, is a temporary state of affairs, and if, hm, if Her husband and children cease to exist, then the cosmic imbalance will be righted and She will be released from Her, hm, enslavement and return to Her proper consciousness."
"It doesn't help that Daddy's a Lord of Darkness," said Lord Ermenwyr. "Complete with black armor and other evil cliches. But the fact is, the Orphans simply don't like anybody. They despise people like Willowspear for not holding to the Old Faith. They don't like demons just on principle, because chaos isn't in line with their idea of cosmic harmony. And they
really
hate your people, Smith. Especially now. Which is unfortunate, because nobody else likes you much either."
"Oh, what did we ever do to anybody?" Smith demanded. He was cold, and tired, and starting to feel mean.
Lord Ermenwyr pursed his lips. "Well... let's start with acting as though you're the only people in the world and it all belongs to you. The rest of us get relegated to 'forest denizen' status, as though we were another species of beast, or maybe inconvenient rock formations. It never seems to occur to you that we might resent it.
"Then, too, there's the innocent abandon with which you wreck the world, and I say innocent because I really can't fathom how anybody but simpletons could pour sewage into their own drinking water. You cut down forests, your mines leave cratered pits like open sores, and--have you noticed how expensive fish is lately? You've nearly fished out the seas. I might add that the whales are not fond of you, by the way."
"And the other races never do anything wrong, I suppose," said Smith.
"Oh, by no means; but they don't have quite the impact of the Children of the Sun," said Lord Ermenwyr. "You're such ingenious artificers, you see, that's part of the problem. Yet I do so love your cities, and your clever toys, like this charming boat for example. I'd be desolated if I had to live in the forest like the Yendri. Do you know, they didn't even have fire until Mother taught them how to make it? I can't imagine dressing myself in leaves and living in a bush and, and having nasty tasteless
straj
for breakfast, lunch, and dinner." He glared at Willowspear, who rolled his eyes.
"It is a simple and harmonious life, my lord," he said. "And it harms not the earth, nor any other living thing."
"But it's damned boring," said Lord Ermenwyr. "Give me the Children of the Sun any day. If only they would learn to use birth control!" He looked back at Smith imploringly.
"Sex is good for you," said Smith. "And you don't get a baby every time, you know. If we have more than anybody else, it's because we're made better than other people, see? Physically, I mean, and no offense to any races present. But you can't ask people not to make love."
"But--" Lord Ermenwyr pulled at his beard in frustration. "You could use--"
"They don't know about it, my lord," said Willowspear.
"I beg your pardon?" The lordling stared.
"They don't know about it," said Willowspear quietly, gazing into his cup of wine. "My Burnbright was as innocent as a child on the subject. She didn't believe me when I explained. Even afterward, she was skeptical. And, of course, with our baby on the way, there has been no opportunity--"
"Oh, you're lying!"
"I swear by your Mother."
Lord Ermenwyr began to giggle uneasily. "So that's why prostitutes always seem so surprised when I--"
"What are you talking about?" Smith demanded, looking from one to the other of them. Lord Ermenwyr met his stare and closed his eyes in embarrassment.
"No, Smith, you're a man of the world, surely
you
know," he said.
"What?"
"Oh, gods, you're old enough to be my father, this is too--it really is too--you really don't know, do you?" Lord Ermenwyr opened his eyes and began to grin. He set down his drink, wriggled to the edge of his seat, and leaned forward. Swiftly, in terse but admirably descriptive words, he told Smith.
Smith heard in blank-faced incomprehension.
"Oh, that'd never work," he said at last.
On the seventh day, they came to the falls.
Smith had been expecting them. He had heard the distant rumble, seen the high haze of mist and the land rising ahead in a gentle shelf.
"You'd better fetch his lordship," he told Willowspear, who was standing at the rail between Cutt and Crish, scanning the riverbank. So far there had been no sign of the Yendri.
"What is it?"
"We're going to run out of navigable river up ahead, and he'll have to decide what he wants us to do next."
"Ah. The Pool of Reth," said Willowspear.
"You knew about it?"
"The monastery is not far above. Three days' journey this way, perhaps. His Mother corresponds with them often."
"Fine. What are we going to do about the waterfall?"
Willowspear spread his slender hands in a shrug. "My lord assumed you would think of a way. You people are so clever, after all," he added, with only the faintest trace of sarcasm.
Smith spun the wheel, edging the
Kingfisher's Nest
around a dead snag. "Funny how everyone thinks we're the worst people in the world, until they need something done.
Then
we're the wonderful clever people with ideas."
Willowspear sighed.
"You mustn't take it personally."
"All I know is, if you put a naked Yendri and a naked Child of the Sun down in a wilderness, with nothing to eat and nowhere to sleep, the Yendri would sit there and do nothing for fear of stepping on a blade of grass. The Child of the Sun would figure out how to make himself clothes and tools and shelter and--in ten generations the Child of the Sun would have cities and trade goods and--and
culture,
dammit, while the Yendri would still be sitting there scared to move," said Smith.
"If I were going to argue with you, I would point out that in ten more generations the Child of the Sun would have wars, famine, and plague, and the Yendri would still be there. And in ten more generations the Child of the Sun would be dead, leaving a wrecked place where no blade of grass grew; and the Yendri would still be there," said Willowspear. "So who is wiser, Smith?"
"I'm sure I don't know," said Lord Ermenwyr, climbing up on deck. Stabb followed him. "But the only way anyone would ever win this stupid experiment would be to make the naked Yendri and the naked Child of the Sun of opposite sexes. Then they'd think of something
much
more interesting to do. What's that noise up ahead, Smith?"
"You'll see in a minute," said Smith. They came around a long bar of mud alive with basking water snakes, yellow as coiled brass, and beheld the Pool of Reth.
It opened four acres of forest to the sun, and the water was clear as green glass endlessly rippling, save at the edge where the Rethestlin thundered down in its white torrent from the cliff, along a wide shelf the height of a house. Green ferns taller than a man leaned from the bank, feeding on the air that was wet with rainbows. Tiny things, birds maybe, flitted across in the sunlight, and now and then one of them would make an apparently suicidal plunge into the cascade.
Willowspear pointed silently. On the bank to one side was an open meadow, and two tall stones stood there, carved with signs as the three at Hlinjerith had been carved. The same flowers had been planted about their bases, but in this more sheltered place had grown to great size. Rose brambles were thick as Willowspear's arm, poppy blooms the size of dishes, and the standing stones seemed smaller by comparison. A trail led from them to the base of the cliff, where it switchbacked up broadly, an easy climb.
"Here the Star-Cloaked faltered," said Willowspear. He drew a deep breath and sang: " 'Leading the unchained-lost-amazed, holding the Child, the blood of his body in every step he took; this was the first place his strength failed him, and he fell from the top of the cliff. The Child fell with him. The people came swift down running lamenting, and found Her floating, for the river would not drown the Blessed-Miraculous-Beloved; and in Her fist She held the edge of his starry cloak, as in Her hand She now holds the heavens and all that is in them.