The Anvil of the World

The song rose seemingly from nowhere, warbled out in a profound and rather eerie contralto. It was a moment before Smith realized that Mrs. Smith was singing, from within her cloud.

They all sat staring at her a moment before Balnshik pulled a handkerchief from Lord Ermenwyr’s pocket and handed it to her.

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Smith indistinctly. “You could top up my drink, too, if you don’t mind. Your father used to sing that, young Willowspear.” She blew her nose. “When he was stoned. Mind you, we all were, most of the time. But do go on.”

“Daddy thinks that the Star-Cloaked Man died, and was quietly buried on that spot,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “But most Yendri believe some magical craft bore him away across the sea. And all the white butterflies went with him. The Yendri crossed the river with Mother and the rest of the refugees, and they settled in the forests.”

“But each year, in the season of his going, many of our people travel to that grove where the river meets the sea,” said Willowspear. “There they pray, and meditate. In sacred Hlinjerith, it is said, healing dreams come to the afflicted, borne on the wings of white butterflies.”

“And now, just guess, Smith, where your Mr. Smallbrass has decided to build his Planned Community,” said Lord Ermenwyr.

“Oh,” said Smith.

“No wonder the greenies are having fits,” said Mrs. Smith, blowing her nose again.

“That’s awful!” said Burnbright, appalled. She looked up at Willowspear. “We can’t just go building houses all over somebody else’s holy place! Why didn’t you tell me what was going on?”

“My love, what could you do?” Willowspear replied. “You’re not to blame.”

“But it’s wrong,” she said. “And we’re always doing it, aren’t we? Cutting down your trees and moving in? We don’t know it’s wrong, but no wonder you hate us!”

“How could I ever hate you?” he said, kissing her between the eyes. “You are my jewel-of-fire-and-the-sun. And you are not like the others.”

“I am, though,” Burnbright said. Lord Ermenwyr cleared his throat.

“To interrupt this touching moment of mutual devotion— I haven’t told all yet.”

“It gets worse?” asked Smith.

“Yes, it does,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “As bad luck would have it, there was a prophecy made when Mother and Daddy got married, to the effect that one day the Star-Cloaked Man will return from over the sea, and that he’ll set the world to rights again. Daddy says it was propaganda put about by reactionary elements who disapproved of Mother no longer being quite such a virgin as she used to be.

“Nevertheless—that prophecy’s been dug out and dusted off. The Yendri are saying that the Star-Cloaked Man is coming back any day now. And when the White Ship comes sailing back and ties up at the Smallbrass Estates Marina, formerly Hlinjerith of the Misty Branches—well, the Star-Cloaked’ll be pretty cheesed off to see what’s happened to local property values.”

“But it’s only a legend, right?” said Smith.

“Not to all those denizens of the forest,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “And the first of your people to set an axe to the sacred grove will get his head split open. It’ll be all-out race war.”

“But the Yendri are nice. They don’t do things like that,” said Burnbright miserably.

“Some of them do,” said Balnshik. “Remember Mr. Flowering Reed?”

There was a silence at that.

“Of course,” said Lord Ermenwyr in a terrifically casual voice, “the clever thing to do would be to take a holiday in a happy seaside resort before all hell breaks loose and happy seaside resorts become a thing of the past, then skip out to a nice impenetrable mountain fortress ironclad with unbreakable protective spells.

“Even better would be persuading one’s friends to join one in safety. So one could watch the smoke rising from the former seaside resorts without getting all upset about one’s friends dying down there. You see?”

“Do you really think it’ll come to that?” said Smith.

“It cannot,” said Willowspear. He had another gulp of his drink and looked up from it with the fire of determination in his eyes. “My students listen to me. Perhaps I could form a delegation. If my people would only talk to yours—”

“What would it take to make anybody listen, though?” Smith looked uneasily at Willowspear. “And should you call attention to yourself? You’ve got a lot to lose if it goes wrong.”

“I have more to lose if no one makes the effort!” said Willowspear.

“More than you realize,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “There are other players in this game, my friend.”

“What do you mean?”

The lordling looked shrewd. “The Yendri aren’t the only people with colorful mythology. Burnbright, my sweet, have you ever told your husband the story of the dreadful Key of—”

His mouth remained open, forming the last syllable of what he had been about to say, his expression did not change in the slightest; but it was as though Time had stopped in a narrow envelope about his body. The others sat blinking at him for a moment, waiting for him to pick up his train of thought or sneeze.

“Master?” said Balnshik sharply.

“Is he having a seizure or something?” Mrs. Smith demanded.

“No, because he’d be jerking his arms and legs and foaming at the mouth and spitting out live scorpions,” said Burnbright. “There was this holy man in Mount Flame who used to—”

“Should he be glowing?” Smith inquired, leaning close to look at him.

Whether he should or not, Lord Ermenwyr had certainly begun to glow from within, as though he were a lantern made of opaque glass. It was an ominous green in color, that light, edged with something like purple, though it was steadily brightening to white—

“Hide your faces!” ordered Balnshik, in a voice none of them considered disobeying even for a second, though Willowspear had already pulled Burnbright down and dropped with her.

Smith found himself staring bemusedly at a pair of skeletal hands silhouetted before his face, which was odd because his eyes were closed … understanding at last, he gulped and rolled blindly off his seat, burying his face against the garden flagstones. The horrible light was everywhere still, but it had taken on a quality that was more than visual. It had a scent, a painful perfume. It was sound, a hissing, insinuating crackling like … like fire or whispering…

Voices. Something was talking. He didn’t understand the language. Was it being spoken, or played?

Abruptly it stopped, and the light went out. Smith heard Lord Ermenwyr say “Oh, damn,” quite distinctly. Then there was a crash, as though he had toppled backward.

“What the bloody hell was that?” said Mrs. Smith, from somewhere at ground level nearby.

“What is it? What’s the matter?” Willowspear sounded agonized.

“He’s—ow—oh, the baby’s kicking—” said Burnbright, somewhat muffled.

“Come now, Master, this won’t do,” said Balnshik quite calmly, though with a certain distortion in her voice that suggested she might have altered her appearance just the tiniest bit, and was speaking through, for example, three-inch fangs. “Sit up and collect your wits. You’re not hurt at all. Stop frightening everyone.”

Smith opened his eyes cautiously. He could see again. No glowing afterimages, no clouds of retinal darkness. It was as though the light had never been. He got to his feet and peered at Lord Ermenwyr, who was sitting up in Balnshik’s arms. There was still a flicker of green light on the surface of his eyes.

“My lord has simply received a Sending,” Balnshik explained.

“Oh, is that all,” grumbled Mrs. Smith, struggling to stand.

“It’s a message conveyed by sorcerous means,” said Willowspear, helping her up. “My lord, are you well?”

Lord Ermenwyr had, in fact, begun to recover his composure and grope for his smoking tube; instead he sagged backward and closed his eyes.

“Feel—weak … Must… lie … down…” He moaned.

Balnshik pursed her lips.

“Smith…,” Lord Ermenwyr continued, “Willowspear… carry me up to my…. my bed…”

Smith and Willowspear exchanged glances. Balnshik was perfectly capable of throwing her master over one shoulder like a scarf and carrying him anywhere he needed to be, and everyone present knew this, which was perhaps why Lord Ermenwyr opened one eye and groaned, with just an edge to his feebleness:

“Nursie dearest… you must see to … to … poor little Burnbright… Smith and Willowspear, are you going to let me die here on the damned pavement?”

“No, my lord,” said Willowspear hurriedly, and he and Smith raised Lord Ermenwyr between them. The lordling got an arm over both of their shoulders and staggered between them. He continued to make pitiful noises all the way up the hotel stairs and down the corridor to his suite, where Cutt and Crish stood like menhirs on either side of the gaping door.

“Help me … to the bed … not you, I meant Smith and Willowspear,” snapped Lord Ermenwyr. “So … weak…”

They dutifully carried him across the threshold and were well into the dark room before the ceiling fell in on them. At least, that was what Smith remembered it sounding like afterward.



Smith opened his eyes and blinked at the ceiling.

Ceiling? It looked like the underside of a bunk. It was the underside of a bunk, and it was pretty close to his face. In fact there didn’t seem to be much room anywhere, and what there was, was pitching in a manner that suggested…

All right, he was in the forecastle of a ship. That might be a good thing. It might mean that the last twenty years had all been a dream, and he was going to sit up and discover he was youthful, flexible, and a lot less scarred.

Smith sat up cautiously. No; definitely not flexible. Youthful, either. Scars still there. And the cabin he occupied was a lot smaller than the forecastle of the last ship in which he’d served, though it was also much more luxurious. Expensive paneling. Ornamental brasswork. Fussy-patterned curtains at the portholes. Probably not a lumber freighter, all things considered.

He swung his legs over the edge of the bunk and stood up, unsteadily, trying to find the rhythm of the ship’s movement and adjust. The immediate past wasn’t a complete void: he remembered confusion, voices, torchlight, lamplight…

The ship heeled over in a manner that suggested it wasn’t being crewed very well. Smith clung to the edge of the bunk, then lurched to the porthole, just in time to see a shapeless mass of nastiness falling past. On the deck immediately above his head, someone profoundly baritone attempted to make consoling noises, and an irritable little voice replied, “No, I don’t give a damn. Just don’t let go of the seat of my pants.”

Mumble mumble mumble mumble.

“Don’t be stupid, we can’t be in danger. The sky is blue, it’s broad daylight, and, anyway, the beach is right over there. See the surf?”

This remark, together with the realization that it had been spoken over a steady background din of clinking blocks and flapping canvas, sent Smith out of the cabin and up the nearest companionway as though propelled from a cannon’s mouth.

“Master, the Child of the Sun has awakened,” said Cutt in a solicitous voice, addressing Lord Ermenwyr’s backside. Lord Ermenwyr was too busy vomiting to reply, and Smith was too busy hauling on the helm and praying to all his gods to comment either, so there was a moment of comparative silence. The ship heeled about, throwing Lord Ermenwyr backward onto the deck, and her sails fluttered free.

“You! Whichever one you are! C’mere and hold this just like this!” Smith shouted, seizing Strangel and fixing his immense hands on the wheel. The demon obeyed, watching in bemusement as Smith ran frantically about on deck, making sheets fast, dodging a swinging boom, and crying hoarsely all the while, “Lord-Brimo-of-the-Blue-Water save us from a lee shore, Rakkha-of-the-Big-Fish save us from a lee shore, Yaska-of-the-White-Combers save us from a lee shore, two points into the wind, you idiot! No! The other way! Oh, Holy Brimo, to Thee and all Thine I swear a barrel of the best and a silver mirror if You’ll only get us out of this—”

“Rakkha-of-the-Big Fish?” Lord Ermenwyr mused from the scuppers.

Smith raced past him and grabbed the helm again.

“Wasn’t I holding it right?” Strangel inquired reproachfully.

“—Holy Brimo, hear my prayer, You’ll get a whole bale of pinkweed and, and an offering of incense, and, er, some of those little cakes the priests seem to think You like, anything, just get me off this lee shore please!”

“I think it’s working, whatever it is you’re doing,” Lord Ermenwyr said. “We’re not going wibble-wobble-whoops anymore. You see, lads? I told you Smith knew how to operate one of these things.”

The next hour took a lot out of Smith, though the ghastly roar of the surf grew ever fainter astern. He had no time to ask the fairly reasonable questions he wanted to ask with his hands around Lord Ermenwyr’s throat, but he was able to take in more of his surroundings.

The ship was clearly somebody’s pleasure craft, built not for sailing but for partying, and she was a galley-built composite: broad in the beam and shallow of draft, operating at the moment under sail, but with a pair of strange pannierlike boxes below the stern chains and a complication of domes, tanks, and pipes amidships that meant she had the new steam-power option too. The boilers seemed to be stone-cold, however, so it was up to Smith to get her out of her present predicament.

Once the ship’s movement had evened out, Lord Ermenwyr crawled from the scuppers and strolled up and down on deck, hands clasped under his coattails, looking on in mild interest as they narrowly avoided reefs, rocks, and Cape Gore before winning sea room. His four great bodyguards lurched after him. There was no one else on deck.

“Where’s the crew?” Smith demanded at last, panting.

“I thought you’d be the crew,” said Lord Ermenwyr, holding up his smoking tube for Crish to fill with weed. “I knew you used to be a sailor. Aren’t these new slaveless galleys keen? I can’t wait until we fire this baby up and see what she can do!”

Out of all possible things he might have said in reply, Smith said only, “What’s going on, my lord?”

Lord Ermenwyr smiled fondly and lit his smoke. “Good old sensible Smith! You’re the man to count on in a crisis, I said to Nursie.”

“Is she here?”

“Er—no. I left her in Salesh to look after the ladies. They’ll be absolutely safe, Smith, believe me, whatever happens. Do you know any other experienced midwife who can also tear apart armored warriors with her bare, er, hands? Lovely and versatile.”

Smith counted to ten and said, “You know, I’m sure you gave me a thorough explanation of this whole thing and got my consent, too, but I seem to have lost my memory. Why am I here?”

“Ah.” Lord Ermenwyr puffed smoke. “Well. Partly because you clearly needed a holiday, but mostly because you’re such a damned useful fellow in a fight. We’re on a rescue mission, Smith. Hope you don’t mind, but I had a feeling you might have objected if I’d asked you first. And I knew I could never get Willowspear to listen to reason, so I had to knock him out too—”

There was a drawn-out appalled cry from below. Willowspear rushed up the companionway, staring around him.

“Oh, bugger; now I’ll have to start the explanation all over again,” said Lord Ermenwyr.

Willowspear was much less calm than Smith had been. The few inhabitants of Cape Gore looked up from mending their nets as his shriek of “What?” echoed off the sky.



“I don’t know if I’ve ever told you about my sister, Smith,” said Lord Ermenwyr, pouring out a stiff drink. He offered it to Willowspear, who had collapsed into a sitting position against the steam tanks and was clasping his head in his hands. Willowspear ignored him.

“No, I don’t think you have,” said Smith.

Lord Ermenwyr tossed back his cocktail and sighed with longing. “The Ruby Incomparable, Lady Svnae. Drop-dead gorgeous, and a gloriously powerful sorceress in her own right to boot. I proposed to her when I was three. She just laughed. I kept asking. By the time I was thirteen, she said it wasn’t funny anymore, and she’d break my arm if I didn’t leave off. I respected that; yet I still adore her, in my own unique way.

“And I would do anything for her, Smith. Any little gallant act of chivalry or minor heroism she required of me. How I’ve dreamed of spreading out my second-best cloak for her to foot it dryly over the mire! Or even, perchance, riding to her rescue. Suitably armed. With a personal physician standing by in case of accidents. Which is why I need the two of you along on this junket, you see?”

“So… the Sending was from your sister?” guessed Smith. “She’s in trouble and she needs you to save her?”

“I believe the word she used was Assist, but… it amounts to the fact that she needs me,” said Lord Ermenwyr.

“My wife needs me, my lord,” said Willowspear hoarsely.

“She doesn’t need to see you stoned to death or torn apart by an angry mob,” Lord Ermenwyr replied. “And it was clear you were getting heroic ideas, so I just stepped in and did what was best for you. And look at this lovely boat I was able to get on an hour’s notice, remarkably cheaply! I thought I’d call her the Kingfisher’s Nest. Aren’t those striped sails sporty? The kitchen’s even stocked with delicacies. Cheer up; you’ll be happily reunited once this is all over.”

“Where is your sister, then?” Smith asked, keeping a wary eye in the coastline.

“Ah, this is the clever part,” said Lord Ermenwyr, laying a finger alongside his nose. “She’s at the Monastery of Rethkast. Which is on the Rethestlin, you see? So if we’d set out on foot to rescue her, we’d have had to have hired porters and spent weeks trudging across plains and mountains and other dreary things.

“This way, we just sail along the coast to the place where the Rethestlin flows into the sea, and float up the river until we’re at the monks’ back door. The Ruby Incomparable descends to her little brother’s loving arms, he bears her off in triumph, and we all sail back to Salesh to pick up the supporting cast before going off on a pleasure cruise of indeterminate length.”

Smith groaned.

“You don’t have a problem with my beautiful plan, do you, Smith?” Lord Ermenwyr glared at him.

“No,” said Smith, wishing Balnshik were there to give the lordling the back of her hand. “I have a lot of problems with your plan. See those sails on the horizon? The purple ones? Those are warships, my lord. They belong to Deliantiba. It’s got a blockade on Port Blackrock just now. We can’t sail through, or they’ll board us and confiscate our vessel, if we’re lucky.”

“Oh. And if we’re not lucky?”

“We’ll hit a mine, or take a bucketful of clingfire or a broadside of stone shot,” Smith told him.

Lord Ermenwyr stared at the purple sails a long moment.

“There’s a ship merchant in Salesh who’s going to find that seven hundred of his gold pieces have suddenly turned into asps,” he said. “The smirking bastard. No wonder he had so many of these recreational vessels up for sale.”

“And even if the blockade wasn’t there,” Smith continued, “what makes you think that the Rethestlin is navigable?”

Lord Ermenwyr turned, staring at him. “I beg your pardon?”

“He doesn’t know about the falls. He can’t read maps,” said Willowspear with venom. “His lord father had a geographer captured especially to teach him, but he wouldn’t learn. He was a spoiled little blockhead.”

Now Lord Ermenwyr turned to stare at Willowspear, and Smith stared too. Willowspear looked back at them with smoldering eyes.

“Why, my old childhood friend and family retainer,” said Lord Ermenwyr, “is that Resentment I see in your face at last? Yes! Let it out! Revel in the dark side of your nature! Express your rage!”

Without a word, and quicker than a striking snake, Willowspear stood up and punched him in the mouth. Lord Ermenwyr tottered backward and fell, and his bodyguards were beside him quicker than Willowspear had been, snarling like avalanches.

“You have struck our Master,” said Stabb. “You will die.”

But Lord Ermenwyr held up his hand.

“It’s all right! I did ask for it. You may pick me up, however. I have to admit I was no good at maps,” he added, as his bodyguards lifted him and dusted him off with solicitous care, “I just wasn’t interested in them.”

“Really?” said Smith, too struck by the surrealism of the moment to come up with anything better to say.

“He defaced his tutor’s atlas,” snapped Willowspear. “He crossed out the names of cities and wrote in things like Snottyville and Poopietown. I could not believe Her son would do such things.”

“Neither could Daddy,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “I thought he was going to toss me off a battlement when he saw what I’d done. He actually apologized to the man and set him free. I had got it through my nasty little head that the blue wriggly lines meant water, though. And where there’s water, you can float on it, can’t you? So how do we have a problem, Smith?” He narrowed his eyes.

“Do you know what a waterfall is?” Smith watched the purple sails.

“Of course.”

“How do you sail up one?”

Lord Ermenwyr thought about that.

“So … sailors don’t have some terribly clever way of getting around the problem?” he said at last.

“No.”

“Well, we’ll figure something out,” said Lord Ermenwyr, and turned to look at the warships. “Aren’t those things getting closer?”

“Yes!” said Willowspear, undistracted from his fury.

“Do you think they’ve seen us?”

“It’d be a little hard to miss the striped sails,” said Smith.

“All right, then; we’ll just go around their silly blockade,” Lord Ermenwyr decided. “It’ll delay us, I suppose, but it can’t be helped.”

Smith was already steering a course out to sea, but within the next quarter hour it became clear that one warship was breaking from its squadron and making a determined effort to pursue them. Lord Ermenwyr watched its progress from the aft rail. Willowspear stalked forward and prayed ostentatiously, like a gaunt figurehead.

“I think we need to go faster, Smith,” the lordling remarked after a while.

“Notice how they’ve got three times the spread of canvas we have?” said Smith, glancing over his shoulder.

“That’s bad, is it?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Well, can’t we just do something sailorly like, er, clap on more sail?”

“Notice how they’ve got three masts, and we have one?”

“I know!” Lord Ermenwyr cried. “We’ll light the boiler and get the invisible oarsmen going!”

“That would probably be a good idea,” Smith agreed.

“Yes! Let them eat our dust! Or salt spray, or whatever.”

Smith nodded. Lord Ermenwyr fidgeted.

“Ah … do you know how to get the mechanism working?” he asked politely.



The boiler took up most of a cabin amidships, and it had been cast of iron in the shape of a squatting troll, whose gaping mouth was closed by a hinged buckler. Fortunately for everyone concerned, its designer had thoughtfully attached small brass plaques to the relevant bodily orifices, marked LIGHT BURNER HERE and FILL WITH OIL HERE and RELIEVE PRESSURE BY OPENING THIS VALVE.

“How whimsical,” Lord Ermenwyr observed. “If I ever have to transform a deadly enemy into an inanimate object, I’ll know what form to give him.” He shuddered as Smith yanked open the oil reservoir.

“Empty,” Smith grunted. “Did your ship merchant sell you any fuel?”

“Yes! Now that you mention it.” The lordling backed out of the cabin and opened the door to the cabin opposite, revealing it to be solidly stacked with small kegs. “See?”

Smith sidled through and pulled a keg down to examine it. “Well, it’s full,” he stated. “Good stuff, too; whale oil.”

“You mean it’s been rendered down from whales?” Lord Ermenwyr grimaced.

“That’s right.” Smith tapped the image stenciled in blue on the keghead, a cheery-looking leviathan.

“But, Smith—they’re intelligent. Like people.”

“No, they’re not; they’re fish,” said Smith, looking around for a funnel. “Mindless. Here we go. You hold that in place while I pour, all right?”

“Promise me you won’t throw the empties overboard, then,” said Lord Ermenwyr, reaching out gingerly with the funnel. “Certain mindless fish have been known to stalk fishermen with something remarkably like intelligence. And a sense of injury.”

Smith shrugged. When the oil reservoir had been filled, when the water pump had been opened, when the burner had been lit with a handy fireball and the troll’s eyes begun to glow an ominous yellow behind their glass lenses, Lord Ermenwyr stood back and regarded the whole affair with an expression of dissatisfaction.

“Is that all?” he said. “I was expecting a rush of breathtaking speed.”

“It has to boil first,” said Smith.

There came a thump and clatter on the deck above their heads.

“Master,” said a deep voice plaintively, “that ship threw something at us.”

Smith swore and sped up the companionway.

The bodyguards were standing in a circle, staring down at a ball of chipped stone that rolled to and fro on the deck. Willowspear, who had retreated as far forward as he could get, pointed mutely at the warship that was by then just over an effective shot’s length astern, close enough to see the blue light in the depths of the cabochon eyes of its dragon figurehead.

“Was that a broadside?” inquired Lord Ermenwyr, worming past Smith to glare at the ship.

“No. That was a warning,” said Smith.

Cutt, Crish, Stabb, and Strangel all bent at once to pick up the stone ball, and butted heads with a noise like an accident in a quarry. After a moment of confused growling, Cutt got hold of the ball. He turned and threw it at the warship, in a titanic stiff-armed pitch that struck its foretop and broke the yard, sending it crashing to the deck in a tangle of rigging.

Lord Ermenwyr applauded wildly.

“That’ll slow ‘em down! Good Cutt!”

“What if all they wanted to do was speak with us?” cried Willowspear. “Do you realize we may have just lost any chance of resolving this peacefully?”

“Oh, you’re no fun at all.”

“The best we could have hoped for was being boarded anyway,” said Smith. “They’d have confiscated the boat and stuck us in a holding prison for civilians while they sorted us out. If we were lucky, we’d have seen the light of day after the war’s over.”

“But—”

“They’re cranking back their catapult for another shot,” warned Lord Ermenwyr.

Smith saw that this was indeed the case, and that the warship’s crew, which had been going about their business on deck in an unhurried way until the strike and only occasionally glancing out at their quarry, was now assembled all along the rail, staring at the Kingfisher’s Nest as a hawk stares at a pigeon.

The fighters among them held up their oval shields, bright-polished, and began to tap them against their scaled armor in a slow deliberate rhythm, clink and clink and clink, and the common sailors took up the rhythm too, beating it out on the rail. On bottles. On pans. The ratcheting of the great arm echoed it too as it came back, and back—

“Hell! Here it comes,” said Smith, and prepared to drop flat, but the shot went high and fell short, sending up a white gout of water.

“We don’t have anything we can shoot back with,” fretted Lord Ermenwyr.

“If you’d told me about this trip ahead of time, we might have,” Smith retorted, watching the activity on the enemy’s deck. Now there were sailors swarming in the rigging, hauling up a replacement yard and cutting lines free, and there was a team busy adjusting the placement of the catapult. The moment it was set again, however, all hands paused in their work, all faces turned back to the Kingfisher’s Nest, and once again they began to beat out the rhythm, clink and clink, even the clinging topmen striking out their beat on the dull blocks and deadeyes.

But as the catapult’s arm moved back, inexorable, there came a sound to counterpoint it: clank, and splash, and clank and splash, and clanksplash clanksplash—

“Hooray!” Lord Ermenwyr made a rude gesture at the warship. “We have oarsmen!”

And oars did seem to have deployed out of the panniers astern, jutting and dipping with a peculiar hinged motion, like a team of horses swimming on either side. The Kingfisher’s Nest did not exactly surge ahead, but there was no denying it began to make way, in a sort of determined crawl over the choppy swell. Over on the warship they launched their shot, and it arched up again and hung for a moment in the white face of the early moon before plummeting down in another fountain, approximately where Smith had been standing two minutes earlier.

“Now they’ll see,” gloated Lord Ermenwyr. “We’ll leave them all befuddled in our, er—”

“Wake,” said Smith.

“Yes, and after dark they won’t have a chance, because we’ll slip silently away through the night and evade them!”

“I don’t think we’re going anywhere silently,” said Smith, shouting over the clatter of the mechanism. “And there’ll be moonlight, you know.”

“Details, details,” Lord Ermenwyr shouted back, waving his hand.

They fled south, keeping the coastline just in sight, and the warship followed close. Its smashed yard was replaced in a disconcertingly short period of time, so the Kingfisher’s Nest lost some of its lead again. The whole chase had a bizarre clockwork quality Smith had never seen in a sea battle before. The Kingfisher’s Nest paddled on, puffing steam like a teakettle, while the warship’s crew kept up its clattering commentary. Were they trying to intimidate? Were they being sarcastic?

They never gave it up in any case, all the way down the coast, past a dozen fishing villages, past Alakthon-on-Sea, past Gabekria. The sun sank red, throwing their long shadows out over the water, and the white foam turned red and the breasts of the seabirds that paced them turned red as blood. When the sun had gone they fled on through the purple twilight, still pursued, and the warship lit all its lanterns as though to celebrate a triumph.

“Aren’t they ever giving up?” complained Lord Ermenwyr. “What did we ever do to them, for hell’s sake?”

“They’re chasing us because we’re running,” said Smith wearily. “I guess they think we’re spies, now. It’s a matter of money, too. We got off a shot at them and did damage, so we’re a legitimate prize if we’re taken.”

Lord Ermenwyr lit his smoking tube with a fireball. “Well, this has ceased to be amusing. It’s time we did something decisive and unpleasant.”

“It has never occurred to you to pray to Her for assistance, has it?” said Willowspear in a doomed voice. His lord pretended not to hear him.

“It would help if we had a dead calm,” said Smith. “That would give us the advantage. Could you do something sorcerous, maybe, like making the wind drop?”

“Hmf! I’m not a weather mage. Daddy, now, he can summon up thunder and lightning and the whole bag of meteorological tricks; but I don’t do weather.”

“In fact, I don’t think I ever saw you praying at all, not once!”

“Could you summon us up a catapult that’s bigger than theirs, then?” Smith inquired.

“Don’t be silly,” said Lord Ermenwyr severely. “Sorcery doesn’t work like that. It works on living energies. Things that can be persuaded. I could probably convince tiny particles of air to change themselves into wood and steel, but I’d have to cut a deal with every one of them on a case-by-case basis, and do you have any idea how long it would take? Assuming I even knew how to build a catapult—”

Smith hadn’t heard the shot, but he caught the brief glint of moonlight on the stone ball as it came in fast and low, straight for the glowing point of the lordling’s smoking tube. Without thinking, he dropped and yanked Lord Ermenwyr’s feet out from under him. Lord Ermenwyr fell, the ball shot past. It smashed into the nearest of the boiler domes, where it stuck. The dome crumpled along one riveted seam and began to scream shrilly, as steam jetted forth.

“Those bastards!” Lord Ermenwyr gasped. “That could have been me!”

“It was meant to be,” said Smith. “But please don’t call them names when they board us, all right? We might get out of this alive.”

“They’re not boarding us,” said Lord Ermenwyr, scrambling to his hands and knees. “I defy them!”

“Notice how we’re slowing down?” said Smith. “See the steam escaping from the boiler? It’s like, er, blood. It’s the vital fluid that makes the clockwork oarsmen row. And, since it’s leaking out—”

“Dead meat!” bellowed Crish, wrenching the ball loose. He turned and shot-putted it straight into the bows of the oncoming warship, where it did a lot of damage, to judge from the hoarse screaming that followed.

“This isn’t helping—” groaned Smith.

“I’ll show them dead meat,” said Lord Ermenwyr, in a voice that made Smith’s blood run cold. He looked up to see that the lordling had risen, and had thrown off the glamour that normally disguised him. His pallor gleamed under the moon; he seemed an edged weapon, a horrible surprise, and there was something corpselike and relentless in the stare he turned on the warship.

He leaned sidelong over the rail and reached a hand toward the water. Smith’s eyes blurred, he winced and blinked and turned his face away: for Lord Ermenwyr was warping size and distance, somehow, effortlessly dipping his hand in the moon-gleaming sea though it lay far below his arm’s reach, swirling the water idly, as though the sea were no more than a basin.

He said something that hurt Smith’s ears. He called. He persuaded. Smith found himself compelled to look back and saw a light rising under the waves. The warship was perilously close, pistol bolts were hissing across the short space of water that they had not crossed, thudding and clattering home. The lordling ignored the bolts, though he turned his head slightly as the shadow of the bow loomed black in the moonlight. Smiling, he raised his hand full of water, and the light under the waves came closer upward, and grew brighter. He spoke a Word.

Something emerged from the water and kissed the lordling’s hand, and that was all Smith registered before his brain refused to accept the geometry of what he saw. But it was bright, glowing to outshine the moon with the green phosphorescence of the depths, and it had a sweetish scent, and it made a high fizzing kind of sound that might have been speech. Smith trembled, felt a seizure beginning, and shut his eyes tightly.

But he could hear the screaming on the other ship.

He heard the wrenching and snapping of wood, too, and the full-throated and triumphant howling of Cutt, Crish, Stabb, and Strangel. He heard Willowspear’s footsteps swift on the companionway, and his pleading voice. Smith swallowed twice before he was able to mutter; “Have mercy on them, have mercy on them, o gods…”

The shouting was going on and on. There was a bubbling, a rush of air and displaced water. There was still shouting. The smell diminished, the bubbling too, but the shouting continued.

Smith opened his eyes and looked full into the moon. For a moment he glimpsed the double image of a towering shape below it that dwindled, solidified, patted its mundane form about it like a garment, and was only Lord Ermenwyr after all. Smith scrambled to his knees and peered over the railing.

The warship was still there, though falling astern and foundering. Its bowsprit with the dragon figurehead, in fact much of its forecastle, was missing. Boats were being flung over and men flung themselves too, swimming desperately to get free of the wreck and of the brightness under the water.

But the bright thing sank, and diminished, and a moment later there was no light but the moon and the now-distant lanterns of the ship, though they were going out one by one. No clattering any more, of any kind, for the first time in hours. Smith’s ears rang in the silence.

“What was that?” he asked.

“Oh, you really don’t want to know,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “They broke my toy, so I broke theirs.”

A wind came across the sea and bellied out their sails. The silence filled gradually with the long-familiar creaking of the ship under way. Lord Ermenwyr took up his smoking tube again and relit it, shielding it against the wind with both hands. Smith steadied his trembling legs, got to his feet.

“Thank you,” he said, “for not having them all killed.”

“Well, aren’t you the magnanimous soul?” said Lord Ermenwyr, regarding him askance. “I couldn’t see myself facing Mother again if I’d given them what they deserved. Her stare of reproach could take out a whole fleet of warships.”

“My lord, we must go back and rescue them,” said Willowspear.

“No!” Lord Ermenwyr bared his teeth. “What do you think I am, a nice man? It won’t do them any harm to paddle across the briny deep looking fearfully over their shoulders for a while, expecting any moment some unspeakable creature to rear up out of the primordial oozy depths and … and … Oh, bugger all, I’m getting seasick again. Help me to my cabin, Willowspear. I want my fix, and I need to lie down.”

Willowspear glowered at him.

“I’m doing this for your Mother’s sake,” he said, and helped Lord Ermenwyr to the companionway.

“Fine. Smith, you can stay up here and mind the steering-wheel thing. Boys, stand guard. Perhaps you can get Smith to teach you how to belay the anchor or some other terribly nautical business…”

His voice retreated belowdecks.

Smith staggered to the wheel and clung there, breathing deeply. Distant on the headland were the tiny yellow lights of a village. There was a fair wind; the stars were washed out by light, the night sky washed to a soft slate-blue, and the moon rode tranquil above the wide water. If anything unwholesome traveled below, it kept to its deeps and troubled the air no more.

He brought his gaze back to the deck, and met eight red lights in a line. No; they were four pairs of eyes. Cutt, Crish, Stabb, and Strangel were watching him, unblinking as towers.

“What is an anchor, Child of the Sun?” asked Strangel.

What the hell, thought Smith.

“All right,” he said. “You’re going to learn to crew this ship. Understand?”

The demons looked at one another uncertainly.



Smith woke on deck in the morning, sprawled in a coil of hawser, and—sitting up—felt every year of his life in the muscles of his lower back. Gritting his teeth, he stood and surveyed the deserted bay wherein the Kingfisher’s Nest lay anchored. It had seemed like a safe harbor by moonlight; he was gratified to see no other sail and a clear sky without cloud.

“Child of the Sun.”

He turned his head (feeling a distinct grinding in his neck) and saw the four demons standing motionless by the rail, watching him hopefully.

“Are we to pull up the anchor now?”

Smith ran his hands over his stubbly face. “Not yet,” he said. “See all these pistol bolts sticking in things? Pull ‘em all out and collect ‘em in a bucket. Find a wood plane and some putty and get rid of the splinters and the holes, all right? And I’ll go see if I can find a wrench so I can start taking the boiler dome apart.”

The demons looked at one another.

“What is some putty, Child of the Sun?”

It took no more than an hour to show them what to do. Smith had discovered that the demons were not actually stupid; just terribly literal-minded. By the time Lord Ermenwyr came on deck they were scraping and filling industriously, as Smith sat in the midst of the disassembled boiler dome, tapping out the dent and realigning the seam.

“Oh, good, I hoped you’d be able to fix that,” said Lord Ermenwyr, pacing forward and surveying the horizon.

“I can patch it together enough to work,” Smith shouted after him. “It would be nice to have some solder, though.”

“You’ll manage,” the lordling assured him.

“Where’s Willowspear?”

“Fixing us breakfast.” Lord Ermenwyr paced back in a leisurely fashion and stood regarding Smith’s efforts with mild interest.

“Are you sure that’s safe?” Smith said, around the rivet he was holding in his teeth at that moment. He spat it out, smacked it into place, and resumed tapping. “You’ve annoyed him a lot, you know. I didn’t think he was capable of hitting anybody.”

“Neither did he.” Lord Ermenwyr snickered. “Another step in his journey toward self-knowledge. Now he’s decided to make amends by cooking for us on this jaunt.”

“Does he know how to cook?”

“He’s dear Mrs. Smith’s son, isn’t he? Bound to have inherited some of her culinary genius.” Lord Ermenwyr hitched up his trousers and squatted on the deck, staring in fascination as Smith worked. “And what a splendid job you’re doing! It just comes naturally to you, doesn’t it? You people are so good with—with hammers, and rivets, and anvils and things. It would really be a shame…”

Smith waited a moment for him to finish his sentence. He didn’t. When Smith looked up he was staring keenly out to sea, pretending he hadn’t said anything.

“Just before you got hit by the Sending,” said Smith, “You were saying a lot of ominous stuff about the collapse of civilization and dropping dark hints about other people getting involved.”

“Was I? Why, I suppose I was,” said Lord Ermenwyr in an innocent voice.

“Yes, you were. And you said something about a Key.”

“Did I? Why, I suppose I—”

“Breakfast, my lord,” said Willowspear, rising from the companionway with a kettle. He sat down cross-legged on the deck and began to ladle an irregularly gray substance into three bowls. Smith and Lord Ermenwyr watched him with identical appalled expressions.

“What the Nine Hells is that stuff?” Lord Ermenwyr demanded.

“Straj meal, boiled with a little salt,” Willowspear told him calmly. “Very healthy for you, my lord.”

“But—but that’s nursery food! We used to fling it at each other rather than eat it,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “And when it dried on a wall, the servants had to scrape it off with wire brushes.”

“Yes, I remember.” Willowspear lifted his bowl and intoned a brief prayer. “Your Mother lamented the wastefulness of Her unappreciative offspring.”

Smith stared at them, remembering the smiling inhuman thing that had summoned a horror from the deeps, and trying to imagine it as an infant throwing its porridge about. “Er … I usually have fried oysters for breakfast,” he said.

“This is a wholesome alternative, sir. Better for your vital organs,” Willowspear replied.

“All right, I know what you’re doing,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “You’re punishing me, aren’t you? In a sort of passive pacifistic Yendri way?”

“No, my lord, I am not.” Willowspear lifted a morsel of the porridge on two fingers and put it into his mouth.

“And I’ll bet the meal has been sitting in bins down there for months! There’s probably weevils in it. Listen to me, damn you! I had that larder stocked with nice things to eat.

Everything the merchant could cram in there on an hour’s notice. Jars of pickled sweetbreads and amphorae of rare liqueurs and candied violets. Fruit syrups! Plovers’ eggs in brine! Runny cheeses and really crispy thin fancy crackers to spread them on! That’s what I want for breakfast!” Lord Ermenwyr raged, his eyes bulging.

“Then I suggest, my lord,” said Willowspear, “that you go below and prepare your own meal.”

He raised his head and looked his liege lord in the eye. Smith held his breath, and for a moment it seemed that the very air between them must scream and burst into flame. At last Lord Ermenwyr seemed to droop.

“You’re using Mother’s tactics,” he said. “That’s bloody unfair, you know.” He sagged backward into a sitting position and took up the bowl. “Ugh! Can’t I even have some colored sugar to sprinkle over it? Or some syrup of heliotrope?”

“I could prepare it with raisins tomorrow,” Willowspear offered.

“I haven’t even got my special breakfast spoon.” Grumbling, Lord Ermenwyr helped himself to the porridge.

Smith took a cautious mouthful. It was bland stuff, but he was hungry. He shoveled it down.

“My lord?” said a voice like a hesitant thunderstorm. Cutt, Crish, Stabb, and Strangel stood watching them eat.

“What?” Lord Ermenwyr snapped.

“We have not tasted blood or flesh in three days,” said Strangel.

Lord Ermenwyr sighed and got to his feet, still dipping porridge from the bowl. As he ate, he scanned the horizon a moment. At last he sighted a fin breaking the water, and a pale shape gliding below the surface close to shore. He pointed, and through a full mouth said indistinctly, “Kill.”

His bodyguards were over the rail and into the water so quickly that Smith barely saw them move.

Moments later, cosmic retribution caught up with a shark.



“So there was this Key you mentioned,” said Smith, as he fitted the boiler dome back into place.

“So I did,” said Lord Ermenwyr a little sullenly, staring out at the whitecaps that had begun to appear on the wide sea. He ignored Willowspear, who was carefully setting up a folding chair for him.

“Well? What were you talking about?”

“The Key of Unmaking.”

Smith halted for a moment before picking up the wrench and going on with his work.

“That’s just a fable,” he said at last. “That’s just, what do you call it, mythology.”

“Oh, is it?” Lord Ermenwyr jeered. “It’s in your Book of Fire. You’re not a believer, then, I take it?”

Smith went on bolting down the dome. He did not reply.

“I am familiar with the Book of Fire,” said Willowspear hesitantly. “Though I confess I haven’t studied it. It’s your, er, religious history, is it not?”

“It’s the legends from the old days,” said Smith, getting to his feet. He wiped his hands clean with a rag.

“You’re not a believer,” Lord Ermenwyr decided. “Very well; but you must have heard the story of the Key of Unmaking.”

“I haven’t,” said Willowspear.

“I’ll tell you about it, then. Long ago, when the World was uncrowded and the personified abstract archetypes supposedly walked around on two legs, there was a God of Smithcraft, which was a pretty neat trick given that black-smithing hadn’t been invented yet.”

“Shut up,” Smith growled. “He was the one who worked out how to make the stars go up and down. He made the swords and tridents for the other gods. He designed the aperture mechanism that rations out moonlight, or we’d all be crazy from too much of it.”

“You do remember, then,” said Lord Ermenwyr.

“And he … well, he fell in love,” said Smith reluctantly. “With the fire in his forge. But he knew the flames were only little images of True Fire. He watched her blaze across the sky every day, but she never noticed him. So he put on his sandals and his cloak and his hat and he walked in the World following after True Fire, always going west, hoping to get to the mountain where she slept every night.

“He took his iron staff with him and, uh, things happened like, when he walked through the Thousand Lake country near Konen Feyy the ground was muddy, and his staff end left holes in the ground that filled up with water, and that’s how the lakes got there. And up in a crater on top of a mountain he found True Fire at last.

“He courted her, and they became lovers. And they wanted to have children, but she—well, she was True Fire, see? So he made children for her, instead, out of red gold. And she touched them with holy fire and they became alive. Perfect mechanisms that could do anything other children could do, including grow up and have children themselves. And they were the ancestors.”

“Some of your ancestors, Willowspear, on your mother’s side,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “Isn’t that an odd thought?”

“And … True Fire made islands rise up out of the sea, and the Children of the Sun lived on them,” said Smith. “Those were the first cities.”

He threw down the rag and squinted up at the sky. “We should get moving again,” he said. “Make sail and weigh anchor!”

The demons, who had been sprawled out in sated repose, clambered to their feet. Two set to with the capstan bars and the anchor jumped up from the depths like a fishhook, while two mounted into the dangerously creaking shrouds.

“There’s more to the story, though, isn’t there, Smith?” said Lord Ermenwyr.

“Yes,” said Smith, taking the helm. “All right, you lot, remember where the anchor goes? Right. Coil the hawser like I showed you.”

“Clever lads!” Lord Ermenwyr called out. “But Smith can’t sail away from the story. Pay close attention, Willowspear, because this is where it all went wrong. If the Children of the Sun had stayed on their islands, all would have been well for the rest of us. Unfortunately, they were clever little clockwork toys and invented all this ship business. Halyards, lanyards, jibs, and whatnot. Which enabled them to spread out and colonize other people’s lands.”

“That was ages before the Yendri even came here, so you can’t blame—”

“The demons were here, though. They matter too.”

“We travel because our Mother travels,” said Smith. “That’s what the stories say. That’s why we’re always moving, the way She moves across the sky.”

“Yes, but you don’t exactly bring us light, do you?” said Lord Ermenwyr.

At the wheel Smith narrowed his eyes, but said nothing as he guided the ship out of the bay.

“Burnbright is the light of my world,” said Willowspear. “They are capable of great love, my lord.”

“And that’s the other problem!” said Lord Ermenwyr. “They breed like rabbits. Even their own legends say that soon there were so many of them running about the world that the other personified abstract archetypes got upset that their own children were being crowded out, so they went to the Smith god and complained.”

“There was a council of the gods,” said Smith. “They told the Father he had to do something. So he made … so he is supposed to have made this Key of Unmaking.”

“The opposite of a key that winds mechanisms up, you see, Willowspear?” said Lord Ermenwyr.

“No,” said Willowspear.

“It shuts us off, all right?” said Smith. “Or it’s supposed to. It’s only a myth, anyway. The stories say that the gods used it to bring on calamities. The first time they used it was when the Gray Plague came. Everybody died but a handful of pregnant women hiding in a cave, that’s what the story says. And then everything was all right for ages, and the cities came back.

“And then… Lord Salt is supposed to have used it when he burnt the granaries of Troon, and famine came, and the Four Wars broke out at once. In the end there was just a handful of fishing villages along the coast, because inland the ghosts massed on the plains like armies, there were so many angry dead. Nobody could live there for generations.

“And people say…” Smith’s voice trailed off.

“What people say” said Lord Ermenwyr, “is that one day the Key of Unmaking will be used for the third time, if the Children of the Sun can’t learn from their mistakes, and there will be no survivors.”

“But it’s just a story,” said Smith stubbornly.

“I have news for you,” said Lord Ermenwyr, taking out his smoking tube and tapping loose the cold ash. “It’s real.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“I beg to differ. What’s the Book of Fire say about it? Let’s see what I can recall… (Mother made us study comparative religions, and Daddy always said they were good for a laugh, so I applied myself to the subject)… ‘The Father-Smith sorrowing sore, on the Anvil of the World, Forged his fell Unmaking Key, Deep in the bones he hid it there, Till Doomsday should dredge it up. Frostfire guards what Witchlight hides.”

“It’s a metaphor,” said Smith.

“How can you disbelieve your own Scripture?” Willowspear asked him, dismayed.

“It’s different for you,” Smith replied. “Your history is still happening, isn’t it? His mother is still writing letters to her disciples and running the shop, isn’t she? If you have a question of faith, you can just go to her and ask her.”

“Though Mother says nobody listens to her anyway,” said Lord Ermenwyr parenthetically.

“But Hlinjerith of the Misty Branches will still be sacred though a thousand years pass, and the White Ship will still have put forth from its shores. The passage of time can’t make truth less true,” argued Willowspear.

“You’re missing the point, my friend,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “It doesn’t matter whether Smith believes in the Key of Unmaking or not. Other people do, and they feel it’s high time it was used again.”

“What kind of people?” asked Smith, feeling a chill.

“Oh … certain demons have felt that way about your race for years,” said Lord Ermenwyr, with an evasive wave of his hand. “But that’s never been much of a threat, because no two demons can agree on the color of the sky, let alone a plan of action. I’m afraid this whole Smallbrass Estates affair has made things worse, though.”

Smith shuddered. But, “So what?” he said. “There isn’t actually any real literal Key.”

“We’ll see, won’t we?” Lord Ermenwyr said. “If you don’t think there’s any real danger, Smith, why should we greenies worry?”

He leaned back in his chair and gazed out at the bright sea sparkling.

“I’m getting a headache from all this glare,” he said after a moment. “Willowspear, fetch me a parasol. And perhaps my spectacles with the black emerald lenses.”



The third day out dawned clear and bright, but far to the south was a glacier wall of fog, purple in the morning sun, blinding white at noon. By afternoon they had come close, and it loomed across half the world. Under it the blue sea faded to steel color and green, with a pattern like watered silk, and distance became confused. Rocks and islets swam into view, indistinct in the gloom.

Smith struck sails and proceeded with caution, relinquishing the helm to Willowspear every few minutes to take soundings from the chains. He sighed with relief when he spotted a marker buoy, a hollow ball of tin painted red and yellow, and ran aft to the wheel.

“We’re at the mouth of the Rethestlin,” he told the others. “And the tide’s with us. This is where we go inland, right?”

“Yes! Turn left here,” said Lord Ermenwyr. He shivered. “Chilly, all this damned mist, isn’t it? Cutt, I want my black cloak with the fur collar.”

“Yes, Master.” Cutt went clumping down the companion-way.

“The water has changed color,” observed Willowspear, looking over the side.

“That’s the river meeting the sea,” Smith told him, peering ahead. “Maybe we should anchor until this fog lifts… no! There’s the next buoy. We’re all right. You ought to thank Smallbrass Enterprises for that much, my lord; this would be a lot harder without the markers.”

Willowspear scowled. “Surely they haven’t begun their desecration!”

“No,” said Smith, steering cautiously. “They can’t have got enough investors yet. These were probably put down for the surveying party. So much the better for us. Weren’t we supposed to be racing to rescue your sister, my lord?”

“She’ll hold off the ravening hordes until we get there,” Lord Ermenwyr said, allowing Cutt to wrap him in the black cloak. “She’s a stalwart girl. Once, when Eyrdway was tormenting me, she knocked him down with a good right cross. Bloodied his nose and made him cry, too. Happy childhood days!”

The tide swung them round the buoy, and another appeared. A smudge on the near horizon resolved into a bank of reeds; and the thump and wash of surf, muffled, fell behind them, and the cry of a water bird echoed. The roll and pitch of the sea had stopped. They seemed stationary, in a drifting world…

“We’re on the river,” said Smith.

The fog lifted, and they beheld Hlinjerith of the Misty Branches.

It was a green place, a dark forest coming down to meadows along the water’s edge, cypress and evergreen oak hung with moss that dripped and swayed in long festoons in the faint current of air moving upriver. Deeper into the forest, towering above the green trees, were bare silver boughs where purple herons nested.

Three tall stones had been set up in a meadow. Yendri signs were cut deep into them, spirals of eternity and old words. Around their bases white flowers had been planted, tall sea poppies and white rhododendrons, and the bramble of wild white roses. Willowspear, who had been praying quietly, pointed.

“The shrine to the Beloved Imperfect,” he said. “That was where he stood, with the Child in his arms. There he saw the White Ship, that was to bear him over the sea, rise from the water. This water!” He looked around him in awe.

Lord Ermenwyr said nothing, watching the shore keenly. Smith thought it was a pretty enough place, but far too dark and wet for Children of the Sun to live there comfortably. He was just thinking there must have been a mistake when they saw the new stone landing, and the guardhouse on the bank at the end of it.

“Oh,” said Willowspear, not loudly but in real pain.

It was a squat shelter of stacked stones, muddy and squalid-looking. Piled about it were more of the red-and-yellow buoys and a leaning confusion of tools: picks, shovels, axes, already rusted. There were empty crates standing about, and broken amphorae, and a mound of bricks. There was a single flagpole at the end of the pier. A red-and-yellow banner hung from it, limp in the wet air.

The shelter’s door flew open, and a figure raced out along the bank.

“Ai!” shouted a man, his hopeful voice coming hollow across the water. “Ai-ai-ai! You! Are you the relief crew?”

“No, sorry,” Smith shouted back.

“Aren’t you putting in? Ai! Aren’t you stopping?”

“No! We’re headed upriver!”

“Please! Listen! We can’t stay here! Will you pick us up?”

“What?”

“Will you pick us up?” The man had run out to the end of the pier, staring out at them as they glided by. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

“We’re on a bit of a schedule, I’m afraid,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “Can’t do it.”

“Oh, please! You don’t—look, the wood’s all wet. We can’t cook anything Bolter and Drill are sick. And at night—” The man cast a furtive glance over his shoulder at the forest.

Smith groaned. “Can’t we give them some oil, at least?” he muttered.

“Would some oil help you?”

“What? Oil? Yes! Just pull in for a minute, please, all right?”

“Bring up a keg,” Lord Ermenwyr ordered Stabb. He raised his voice again to call out in a bantering tone, “So I take it you’re not happy in Beautiful Smallbrass Estates?”

“I wouldn’t live here if you paid me a thousand crowns!” the man screamed, panic in his eyes as he realized that the Kingfisher’s Nest was truly not going to stop.

“Maybe we can pick you up on the return trip!” Smith cried.

“Damn you!” The man wept. Smith grimaced and turned away, watching the river. He heard the splash as Stabb hurled the keg of oil overboard. Turning back, he saw the man wading into the shallows, grabbing desperately at the keg as the eddy carried it close. To Smith’s relief he caught it, and was wrestling it ashore when the tide carried them around a bend in the river, and dark trees closed off the view.

“There, now, he can get a nice fire started with the oil,” said Lord Ermenwyr, watching Smith. “And there’ll probably be a relief crew arriving any day now.”

“What’s in those woods?” asked Smith. “Demons?”

“No!” said Willowspear. “This is a holy place. They brought their terrors with them. This is what happens when men profane what is sacred. The land itself rejects them, you see?”

Smith shrugged. He kept his eyes on the river.



They made hours and many miles upriver before the tidal bore gave out, then moored for the night in a silent backwater. In the morning they lit the boiler again, and thereafter the Kingfisher’s Nest progressed up the river in a clanking din that echoed off the banks, as the dipping ranks of oars worked the brown water. Birds flew up in alarm at the racket, and water serpents gave them a wide berth.



On the fifth day, they ran aground.

Smith had relinquished the helm to Cutt while he downed a stealthy postbreakfast filler of pickled eel. He swore through a full mouth as he felt the first grind under the keel, and then the full-on shuddering slam that meant they were stuck.

He scrambled to his feet and ran forward.

“The boat has stopped, Child of the Sun,” said Cutt.

“That’s because you ran it onto a sandbank!” Smith told him, fuming. “Didn’t you see the damned thing?”

“No, Child of the Sun.”

“What’s this?” Lord Ermenwyr ran up on deck, dabbing at his lips with a napkin. “We’re slightly tilty, aren’t we? And why aren’t we moving?”

“What’s happened?” Willowspear came up the companionway after him.

“Stop the rowers!” Smith ran for the boiler stopcock and threw it open. Steam shrieked forth in a long gush, and the oars ceased their pointless thrashing.

“You have hyacinth jam in your beard, my lord,” Willowspear informed Lord Ermenwyr.

“Do I?” The lordling flicked it away hastily. “Imagine that. Are we in trouble, Smith?”

“Could be worse,” Smith admitted grumpily. He looked across at the opposite bank. “We can throw a cable around that tree trunk and warp ourselves off. She’s got a shallow draft.”

“Capital.” Lord Ermenwyr clapped once, authoritatively. “Boys! Hop to it and warp yourselves.”

After further explanation of colorful seafaring terms, Smith took the end of the hawser around his waist and swam, floundering, to the far shore with it, as Cutt paid it out and Strangel dove below the waterline to make certain there were no snags. After four or five minutes he walked to the surface and trudged ashore after Smith.

“There is nothing sharp under the boat, Child of the Sun,” he announced.

“Fine,” said Smith, throwing a loop of cable about the tree trunk. He looped it twice more and made it fast. Looking up, he waved at those on deck, who waved back.

“Bend to the bloody capstan!” he shouted. Cutt, Crish, and Stabb started, and collided with one another in their haste to get to the bars. Round they went, and the cable rose dripping from the river; round they went again, and the cable sprang taut, and water flew from it in all directions. Round once more and they halted, and the Kingfisher’s Nest jerked abruptly, as one who has nodded off and been elbowed awake will leap up staring.

“Go, boys, go!” said Lord Ermenwyr happily, clinging to the mast. “Isn’t there some sort of colorful rhythmic chant one does at moments like these?”

The demons strained slightly, and the Kingfisher’s Nest groaned and began to slither sideways.

“That’s it!” Smith yelled. “Keep going!”

The Kingfisher’s Nest wobbled, creaked, and—

“Go! Go! Go!”

—lurched into deep water with a splash, and a wave rose and slopped along the riverbank.

“Stand to,” said Smith. As he bent to loose the cable, he became aware of a sound like low thunder. Looking up over his shoulder, he pinpointed the source of the noise. Strangel was growling, glaring into the forest with eyes of flame, and it was not a metaphor.

Smith went on the defensive at once, groping for weapons he did not have. As he followed Strangel’s line of sight, he saw them too: five green men in a green forest, cloaked in green, staring back coldly from the shadows, and each man wore a baldric studded with little points of green, and each man had in his hand a cane tube.

Strangel roared, and charged them.

Their arms moved in such perfect unison they might have been playing music, but instead of a perfect flute chord a flight of darts came forth, striking each one home into Strangel’s wide chest.

He kept coming as though he felt nothing, and they fell back wide-eyed but readied a second barrage, with the same eerie synchronization. The darts struck home again. They couldn’t have missed. Strangel seemed to lose a little of his momentum, but he was still advancing, and smashing aside branches as he came. Not until the third flight of darts had struck him did his roar die in his throat. He slowed. He stopped. His arms remained up, great taloned hands flexed for murder. Their forward weight toppled him and he fell, rigid, and rolled over like a log rolling.

His snarling features seemed cut from stone. The lights of his eyes had died.

The Yendri stared down at him in astonishment.

Smith turned and dove into the river.

He was scrambling over the rail of the Kingfisher’s Nest when the first dart struck wood beside his hand. He felt Willowspear seize his collar and pull him over, to sprawl flat on the deck, and he thought he saw Lord Ermenwyr running forward. Cutt, Crish, and Stabb gave voice to a keening ululation, above which very little else could be heard; but Smith made out the clang that meant someone had closed the stopcock, followed by a tinkly noise like silver rain. He looked up dazedly and saw poisoned darts hitting the boiler domes, bouncing off harmlessly, and Lord Ermenwyr on his hands and knees behind the domes.

“Rope! Rope!” he was shouting, and Smith realized what he meant. The Kingfisher’s Nest had been borne backward on the current, stopped only by the cable that he had not managed to loose in time. It swung now on the flood, its cable straight as a bar. Smith dragged himself forward to the tool chest by the boiler domes, and, groping frantically, there he found a kindling hatchet.

He rose to his knees, saw two Yendri directly opposite him on the bank in the act of loading their cane tubes, and took a half dozen frenzied whacks at the cable before diving flat again. The darts flew without noise. But he heard them strike the domes again, and one dart bounced and landed point down on his hand. He shook it off frantically, noting in horror the tarry smear on his skin where the dart had lain. Someone seized the hatchet out of his hand and he rolled to see Willowspear bringing it down on the cable, bang, and the cable parted and they shot away backward down the river, wheeling round in the current like a leaf.