Fire Sea

10

“Where are you taking the ship?” Alfred asked.

“I’m going to dock at that pier or whatever it is over there,” Haplo answered, with a glance and a nod out the window.

“But the city’s located on the opposite bank!”

“Precisely.”

“Then, why not—”

“It beats the hell out of me, Sartan, how you managed to survive so long. I suppose it’s due to that famous fainting routine of yours. What do you plan to do? Waltz up to the walls of a strange city, not knowing who lives there, and ask them nicely to let you in? What do you say when they ask you where you’re from? What you’re doing here? Why you want inside their city?”

“I would say—that is, I’d tell them—I guess you have a point,” Alfred conceded lamely. “But what do we gain by landing over there?” He gestured vaguely. “Whoever lives in this dreadful place”—the Sartan couldn’t resist a shudder—“will ask the same questions.”

“Maybe.” Haplo cast a sharp, scrutinizing gaze at their landing site. “Maybe not. Take a good look at it.”

Alfred started to walk to the window. The dog growled, ears pricked, teeth bared. The Sartan froze.

“It’s all right. Let him go. Just watch him,” Haplo told the dog, who settled back down onto the deck, keeping its intelligent eyes on the Sartan.

Alfred, with a backward glance at the animal, awkwardly crossed the deck; its slight rocking motion sent the Sartan staggering. Haplo shook his head and wondered what the devil he was going to do with Alfred while exploring. Alfred arrived at the window without major mishap and, leaning against the glass, peered through it.

The ship spiraled down out of the air, landed gently on the magma, floated on sluggish, molten waves.

A pier had been shaped out of what had once been a natural grain of obsidian, extending out into the magma sea. Several other man-made structures, built out of the same black rock, faced the pier across a crude street.

“You see any signs of life?” Haplo asked.

“I don’t see anyone moving around,” Alfred said, staring hard. “Either in the town or on the docks. We’re the only ship in sight. The place is deserted.”

“Yeah, maybe. You can never tell. This might be their version of night, and everyone’s asleep. But at least it’s not guarded. If I’m lucky, I can be the one asking the questions.”

Haplo steered the dragonship into the harbor, his gaze scrutinizing the small town. Probably not so much a town, he decided, as a dockside loading area. The buildings looked, for the most part, like warehouses, although here and there he thought he saw what might be a shop or a tavern.

Who would sail this deadly ocean, deadly to all but those protected by powerful magic—such as Alfred and himself? Haplo was intensely curious about this strange and forbidding world, more curious than he’d been about those worlds whose composition closely resembled his own. But he still didn’t know what to do about Alfred.

Apparently the Sartan was following the line of Haplo’s thoughts. “What should I do?” Alfred asked meekly.

“I’m thinking about it,” Haplo muttered, affecting to be absorbed in the tricky docking maneuver, although that, in reality, was being handled by the magic of the runes of the steering stone.

“I don’t want to be left behind. I’m going with you.”

“It’s not your decision. You’ll do what I say, Sartan, and like it. And if I say you’ll stay here with the dog to keep an eye on you, you’ll stay here. Or you won’t like it.”

Alfred shook his balding head slowly, with quiet dignity. “You can’t threaten me, Haplo. Sartan magic is different from Patryn magic, but it has the same roots and is just as powerful. I haven’t used my magic as much as you’ve been forced by circumstances to use yours. But I am older than you. And you must concede that magic of any type is strengthened by age and by wisdom.”

“I must, must I?” Haplo sneered, although his mind went almost immediately to his lord, a man whose years were numberless, and to the vast power he had amassed.

The Patryn eyed his opposite, eyed the representative of a race who had been the only force in the universe who could have halted the Patryn’s vaulting ambition, their rightful quest for complete and absolute control over the weak-minded Sartan and the squabbling, chaos-driven mensch.

Alfred didn’t look very formidable. His soft face indicated to the Patryn a soft and weak nature. His stoop-shouldered stance implied a cringing, sheepish attitude. Haplo already knew the Sartan was a coward. Worse, Alfred was clad in clothes suited only to a royal drawing room—a shabby frock coat, right breeches tied at the knee with scraggly black velvet ribbons, lace-trimmed neckerchief, a coat with floppy sleeves, buckle-adorned shoes. But Haplo had seen this man, this weak specimen of a Sartan, charm a marauding dragon with nothing more than a few movements from that clumsy body.

Haplo had no doubt in his mind who would win a contest between the two of them, and he guessed that Alfred didn’t either. But a contest would take time and the fighting magicks generated by these two beings—the closest beings to gods the mensch would ever know—would proclaim their presence to everyone within eyesight and earshot.

Besides, on reflection, Haplo didn’t particularly want to leave the Sartan on his ship. The dog would prevent Alfred from breathing, if Haplo ordered it. But the Patryn hadn’t liked the Sartan’s reference to the animal. I know about the dog, he’d said. What did he know? What was there to know? The dog was a dog. Nothing more, except that the animal had once saved Haplo’s life.

The Patryn docked the ship at the silent, empty pier. He kept close watch, more than half-expecting some type of welcome—an official demanding to know their business, an idle straggler, watching their arrival out of curiosity.

No one appeared. Haplo knew little of wharves or shipyards but he took this as a bad sign. Either everyone was fast asleep and completely uninterested in what was happening at their docks or the town was, as Alfred had said, deserted. And towns that were deserted were generally deserted for a reason and that reason was generally not good.

Once the ship was moored, Haplo deactivated the steering stone, placed it once more on its pedestal, its glowing runes extinguished. He began to prepare to disembark. Rummaging in his supplies, he found a roll of plain linen cloth and wound it carefully around his hands and wrists, covering and concealing the runes tattooed on the skin.

The same runes were tattooed over most of his body. He kept himself covered with heavy clothing—a long-sleeved shirt, a leather vest, leather trousers tucked into tall leather boots, a scarf tied close around his neck. No sigla adorned the grim, square-jawed, cleanshaven face, no runes appeared on the palms of the hands or the fingers or the soles of his feet. The rune-magic might interfere with the mental processes and those of the senses: touch, sight, smell, hearing.

“I’m curious,” said Alfred, watching the proceedings with interest. “Why do you bother to disguise yourself? It’s been centuries since . . . since . . .” he faltered, not certain where to go from here.

“Since you threw us in that torture chamber you called a prison?” Haplo finished, glancing at Alfred coolly.

The Sartan’s head bowed. “I didn’t realize ... I didn’t understand. Now, I do. I’m sorry.”

“Understand? How could you possibly understand unless you’ve been there?” Haplo paused, wondering again, uncomfortably, where Alfred had spent his journey through Death’s Gate. “You’ll be sorry, all right, Sartan. We’ll see how long you last in the Labyrinth. And to answer your question, I disguise myself because there could be people out there—like yourself, for example—who remember the Patryns. My Lord does not want anyone to remember—not yet, at least.”

“There are those such as myself, who would remember and try to stop you. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?” Alfred sighed. “I cannot stop you. I am one. You, from what I gather, are many. You didn’t find any trace of my people alive on Pryan, did you?”

Haplo looked at the man sharply, suspecting some sort of trick, though he couldn’t imagine what. He had a sudden vision of those rows of tombs, of the young, dead corpses. He guessed at the desperate search that had taken Alfred to every part of Arianus—from the high realms of the selfaccursed wizards to the lowly realms of the slavelike Gegs. He experienced the terrible grief of coming to realize, finally, that he alone had survived, his race and all its dreams and plans were dead.

What had gone wrong? How could godlike beings have dwindled, vanished? And if such a disaster could happen to the Sartan, could it also happen to us?

Angry, Haplo shrugged off the thought. The Patryns had survived a land determined to slaughter them—proof that they had been right all along. They were the strongest, the most intelligent, the fittest to rule.

“I found no trace of the Sartan on Pryan,” Haplo said, “except a city that they’d built.”

“A city?” Alfred looked hopeful.

“Abandoned. Long ago. A message they left behind said something about some type of force driving them out.”

Alfred appeared bewildered. “But that’s impossible. What type of force could it have been? There is no force, except perhaps your own, that could destroy or even intimidate us.”

Haplo wound the bandages around his right hand, glanced at the Sartan from beneath lowered brows. He seemed to be sincere, but Haplo had journeyed with Alfred in Arianus. The Sartan wasn’t as simpleminded as he appeared. Alfred had discovered Haplo to be a Patryn long before Haplo had discovered Alfred to be a Sartan.

If he did know anything about such a force, he wasn’t talking. The Lord of the Nexus would have it out of him, however.

Haplo tucked the ends of the bandages neatly beneath the shirt cuffs and whistled to the dog, who leapt eagerly to its feet.

“Are you ready, Sartan?”

Alfred blinked in surprise. “Yes, I’m ready. And, since we’re speaking the human language, it might be better if you called me by my name instead of ‘Sartan.’ ”

“Hell, I don’t even call the dog by name and that animal means a lot more to me than you do.”

“There might be those who remember the Sartan, as well as the Patryns.”

Haplo gnawed his lower lip, conceded that the man had a point. “Very well, ‘Alfred.’” He managed to make it sound insulting. “Although that’s not your real name, is it?”

“No. It’s one I adopted. Unlike yours, my true name would sound very strange to the mensch.”

“What is your real name? Your Sartan name? If you’re wondering, I can speak your language—although I don’t like to.”

Alfred drew himself straighten “If you speak our language, you know then that to speak our names is to speak the runes and draw on the power of the runes. Therefore, our true names are known only to ourselves and to those who love us. A Sartan’s name can be spoken only by another Sartan.”

“Just as your name”—Alfred raised a delicate finger, pointed suddenly at Haplo’s breast—“is marked on your skin and may be read only by those whom you love and trust. You see, I also speak your language. Although I don’t like to.”

“Love!” Haplo snorted. “We don’t love anyone. Love is the greatest danger there is in the Labyrinth, since whatever you love is certain to die. As for trust, we had to learn it. Your prison taught us that much-We had to trust each other, because that was the only way we could survive. And speaking of survival, you might want to make certain I stay healthy, unless you think you can pilot this ship back through Death’s Gate yourself.”

“And what happens if my survival depends on you?”

“Oh, I’ll see that you survive, all right. Not that you’ll thank me for it later.”

Alfred looked at the steering stone, the sigla etched on it. He would recognize each sigla, but they were arranged in far different patterns from those he knew. Elven and human languages use the same letters of the alphabet, yet the languages are vastly dissimilar. And although he might be able to speak the Patryn language, Haplo was certain the Sartan couldn’t work the Patryn magic.

“No, I’m afraid I couldn’t manage steering this ship,” Alfred said.

Haplo laughed briefly, derisively, started for the door, then stopped. Turning, he held up a warning hand.

“Don’t try that fainting trick with me. I warn you! I can’t be responsible for what happens if you pass out.”

Alfred shook his head. “I can’t control the fainting spells, I’m afraid. Oh, in the beginning I could. I used it to disguise my magic, like those bandages you wear. What else could I do? I could no more reveal I was a demigod than you could! Everyone would have wanted to use me. Greedy men demanding I give them wealth. Elves demanding I kill the humans. Humans demanding I rid them of the elves . . .”

“And so you fainted.”

“I was beset by robbers.” Alfred lifted his hands, looked down at them. “I could have obliterated them with a word. I could have turned them to solid stone. I could have melted their feet to the pavement. I could have charmed them utterly . . . and left my mark indelibly on the world. I was frightened—not of them, but of what I had the power to do to them. My mental turmoil and anguish was too great for my mind to bear. When I came to myself, I knew how I had solved the dilemma. I had simply fainted dead away. They took what they wanted and left me alone. And now I can’t control the spells. They simply . . . happen.”

“You can control it. You just don’t want to. It’s become an easy way out.” The Patryn pointed over the ship’s hull to the blazing lava sea, burning bright around them. “But if you faint and fall into a puddle in this world, that fainting spell’s liable to be your last!

“Let’s go, dog. You, too, Alfred.”