Up Jim River

XIII. UP JIM RIVER

The endarooa Efranizi set forth from the main docks of Nuxrjes’r two days later and rowed upstream until the southerlies freshened and the sail could be let down. She comprised two galleys linked by a platform on which sat fore and aft cabins and a mast from which hung a square mainsail and a triangular “lantern” sail.

“Remarkably stable,” said Sofwari, “but not much for maneuvering.”

The boat’s captain, Pyar Allweed, laughed. “Don’t need much maneuver on Big River. We sail-up straight during the ‘soons; then let the current carry us back. We just reverse the sail-rigging and the rowers’ benches. ‘Course, working the Delta is almighty different.”

“What,” said Méarana, “is the ‘soons?”

“Told you,” said Captain Pyar, nodding his head toward the south. “When the southerlies blow, it brings the rain.”

Behind them, dark and lowering, thunderheads boiled over the distant Mut’shabiq Delta.

“Well,” Sofwari shouted above the howling wind, “at least we know why they build these little houses on top of the decking.”

Méarana and her people huddled in a close wooden hut, whose canvas door periodically pulled loose of its stays and flapped like a sail with three sheets flying in the wind. Rain sprayed in through gaps in the planking, in the roofing, and through the front door itself.

“Cain’t fer th’ life O’ me see why they bothered,” said Paulie O’ the Hawks.

Zhawn Sloofy, a guide and translator hired in Riverbridge, shook his head. “Alla time, Gaelactics complain. Too wet, too dry, too hot, too cold. Why not stay home where everything more better?”

Paulie O’ the Hawks had come down from Blankets and Beads to gawk at the women and had decided at the last minute to throw in with the expedition. “Youse’re goin’ inta hill country, aina?” he asked the harper. “What farkin good is a cow-kissing plainsman up there?” This, with a nod toward Teodorq. Méarana and Donovan had agreed that another pair of strong arms would not be amiss, and hired Paulie as a second bodyguard.

By morning, the rain had passed on, but a second front moved in right behind it and so by afternoon the downpour had resumed. After a time, Teodorq and Paulie said to hell with it, stripped to loincloths and moccasins, and went out on deck with the boathands, where they helped at odd jobs or squared off in sparring matches. Méarana made them swear not to hurt each other. The sailors watched the matches with interest and bet on the outcomes.

After several days of this, Donovan, in the persona of the Sleuth, announced that the patterns of wins and losses relative to the odds suggested that both Paulie and Teddy were fixing the fights to clean up on the side-bets.

“Which proves there is something those two can agree on,” Méarana said.

The ‘soons moved north in wave after wave. This had a certain predictable consequence. The river began to rise.

“What goes up, must come down,” Captain Pyar told them cheerfully. “Ye’d best brace yourselves for some rough times.”

Teddy and Paulie tied everything down, and laid out straps and lifelines as they had seen the crew do. “One hand for yourself; one hand for the ship,” the captain reminded everyone.

By the fifth day, the river was over its banks and still the ‘soons did not let up. On the shore, the farmers scuttled for high ground and the fields were underwater. The sailors and rowers made signs to the grain-goddess. Sloofy told Méarana that the entire valley depended on the annual rains to refertilize the alluvial plain.

That afternoon, a sailor perched high on the mast hollered, “She’s a-coming!” and slid down the rigging to the deck, where he and his mates struck the sails and joined the rowers at the oars. The helmsman strapped himself to the tiller. Captain Pyar, the boat’s carpenter, and the mate stood at the ready, clipped to the lifelines that ran the length of the deck.

“What’s ‘a-coming’?” Billy Chins asked.

Sofwari frowned. “A flash flood if I don’t miss my guess.”

Donovan grunted. “If the ship’s company think it worthwhile to hang on for dear life, I for one will not call them fools.” And he, too, grabbed hold of the ropes they had run in the aft cabin.

Méarana pulled the cloth flap aside and peered ahead into the steel-gray curtain of rain. The south wind sang through the ropes and stays. The water hissed against the twin hulls. The oars groaned in their locks as the rowers, assisted now by the sailors, bucked the surging current.

And then she saw it. The rain turned black and a wall of water bore down upon them. The rain that had fallen in the northlands was not only returning but, to all appearances, returning all at once.

The boat heeled as the water humped up underneath. Then the wave broke over the deck, and swept Méarana from the doorway and toward the stern. She heard Sofwari’s cry of alarm as she scrambled for the lifeline; but Billy reached out and grasped her arm, hanging on against the force of the water, hauling her to safety.

The wave filled the cabin, lifting them and choking them with turgid water. The cabin walls creaked and Méarana thought they must either burst or the cabin would fill up and drown them all. But the wisdom of the chinks in the woodwork now revealed itself: They acted as scuppers to drain the water out over the stern.

The rowers shouted as they fought to maintain position while a second surge, not as great as the first, lifted them and again drenched everyone on board. The ship heaved and Teddy heaved with it. Billy was dashed against a crossbeam and won a ragged cut. Donovan gripped the lifeline, looking grim. Sloofy asked the goddess why he had ever left the river-bank.

A third wave followed but, after the first two, it seemed almost a gentle caress.

By the time the surges had settled down, a break had come in the clouds and the sun beamed, however briefly, on the countryside. The damage to the boat could have been worse. The fore cabin had been stove in. A plank on the left-side galley had been sprung and was leaking into the hull. A rower had been brained by an oar that had pulled loose from its handlers. And a sailor had a bad cut down the length of his forearm that, under local medical standards, would likely fester and kill him.

The rower was wrapped in a sheet sweetened with herbs, and tied to the prow as a guardian against river hazards until they could raise a burning ghat. The carpenter went to work, first on the hull, then on the fore-cabin. Méarana used some of their medical supplies to treat the sailor.

“Captain Pyar says the worst is over,” Méarana told them when she had returned to the cabin and hung the medical bag on a peg in the wall and taken a seat. “The watercourses up in the mountains bake hard as ceramic during the dry season, and the first rains sluice right off it. He expects the water to rise some more, but not such in a tearing hurry; and the rain will slack off to a constant drizzle. The current has pushed us back about a day’s rowing, but now he can raise sail again and make it up.” She rubbed her face with both hands. There was mud all over, courtesy of the first surge, and it streaked her cheeks and brow. “Ah, well. I was getting tired of the insides of ships and habitats anyway.”

When they went out on deck, they could hardly see the edges of the river, so widely had the flood overspread its banks. Farmsteads and villas poked above the water atop earthen mounds. Catboats were putting out from some of them. Here and there the flood had undermined the embankments and toppled the houses into the waters.

At Rajiloor, the endarooa reached the end of its range. Above this point, the river emerged from the Roaring Gorge, a passage not only too narrow for the vessel to navigate, but one at the head of which was the first of the great waterfalls that marked the upper river. The town was mildly prosperous as a transshipment point because of this. Freight and trade goods were transferred here between endarooas from the lower Aríidnux’r and the durms that plied the upper river, or Multawee.

Like the farmsteads on the alluvial plain, the town of Rajiloor was built atop a rammed-earth platform. The mound had survived decades of floods through the judicious use of marble facings and terraces, culverts and cisterns to divert the water, and frantic repairs between ‘soons. She also benefited from being on the lee bank where the river curved, so the floods coming out of Roaring Gorge sought the east bank.

Rajiloor had been a border town of the old Imperium; but a generation earlier the garrison had declared its general the True Qaysar. Before he could sail his troops downstream to debate the issue, a light-complexioned people of long dark hair called the Tooth of the Wolf had come out of the mountains and made themselves masters of the hinterlands, encircled the the city walls, and waited. When the food ran out, the imperial troops had hailed the paramount chief of the Wolves as the new Qaysar. More realistic than his late predecessor, the Wolf had kept the title “Qaysar” and possession of the Rajiloor Sak, but refrained from bothering downstream lords with other opinions. The key to success being ofttimes a judicious lowering of one’s goals, the Qaysar of Rajiloor pretended that the Qaysar of Nuxrjes’r was his overlord, and the Qaysar of Nuxrjes’r pretended he meant it.

The sailors and rowers took their payout from the captain and vanished into a town in which every other building seemed a tavern or a brothel. The population was a mixture of Rajilooris, Nuxrjes’ri, Wolves, Harps, Emrikii, and others.

Méarana set up a headquarters in a wharfside tavern called The River Dog. The main room was low-ceilinged and was constructed of heavy cross-beamed timbers. The wooden tables were long and narrow, with polished surfaces, and names carved into them. The air was redolent of stale beer.

She sent Donovan and Sloofy to hire the durms they would need for the next leg of their journey. Sofwari went into town, with Teodorq to watch over him, to take more of his cheek samples. That left Méarana in the tavern with Billy and the other Wildman.

She had been wary of the little man ever since Donovan’s revelations. But Billy, seeing how she sat away from him, only sighed. “Ah, missy. Was not Billy Chins good khitmutgar? When he not take care for you?”

“You could have told us you were recruiting for the CCW rebels,” she said. Perhaps it was the deceit that grieved her most; although she could not say Donovan had been much less deceitful.

“Would Greystroke have permitted me aboard his ship if I had? At best, he would have left me to face my pursuer. At worst, he would have done my pursuer’s work for her.”

“You do him an injustice.”

“Do I? For such stakes, would you have announced yourself?”

Méarana had to admit she would not. She spread the holomap across the table. The map was impregnated on a flexible substrate, so it would fold up and fit snugly in a carry-bag. Once unfolded, it shook hands with their amshifars and with the traders’ satellite network, and displayed their locations within a half-league of actual.

The tavern-master spoke the imperial language after a fashion—a generation’s occupancy by the Wolves had not obliterated all knowledge of the ancient loora nuxrjes’r—and Méarana desired to learn something of the conditions in the Roaring Gorge region.

“Ah sure, your honor, the Roaring Gorge is right peaceable the now,” the taverner said. “Himself is after going through there no more’n two-three year back and taught’ em to bend the knee. My wife’s cousin’s younger son was with that army. Now, they might be a bit pouty, but if you carry our Qaysar’s safe conduct—may Owl protect him—they won’t dare be touching you.”

“Are there any Gorgeous folk in town? We could use a native guide through that country, and we can pay well.”

The tavern-master fingered his ear and his eyes wandered to the holomap on the table. “So I’ve heard,” he said. “So I’ve heard. There be none of’ em staying here at the Dog, but there’s always some what come down afore the rains, seeking after their fortunes. I’ll put the word around, if you’d like.”

Méarana nodded. “That would be nice.” She pointed to the second great falls, the one that danced off the Kobberjobble escarpment. “We’ll need to find the way past that. They told us in Riverbridge that we might find guides here in town.”

The tavern-master shook his head in admiration. “Ah sure, and that is a fine map your honor has gotten yourself. Is it some charm that a trood has recited into the cloth that makes it grow so? The Qaysar’s master-general has such a high-low map, but it is made of plaster. I saw it myself when I was young and pretty and marched with the Owls, and I thought it surely a wonder, painted up and all in green and blue and brown. But this is like flying above the land itself.” At this point, Méarana’s question seemed to catch up with his admiration, and he tossed his head. “I hear tell of a trail past Second Falls that passes through the Harp country. Good fortune finding a guide. The Harps be enemies of the Gorge-folk and the Wolves alike. ‘But red gold conquers all.’”

“Are these Harps enemies to regarders?” The locals called all off-worlders after the Bonregarde.

The old man laughed. “They’d not likely know of you, at all. They think the nuxru noorin, the river of light, is the mountain path that Fjin Cuul trod long ago, high up the Mountain of Night.”

“Nushrunorn? Is that what they call the galaxy?”

“No, mildy. That’s what we civilized folk be calling it. The Harps call it the gozán lonnrooda, the shining path. They are simple mountainfolk and don’t know that it’s just a local thickening of the aether that makes the light seem like a continuous band.”

Méarana said nothing to this, although she noticed that even Paulie was much amused, though he could not have believed anything more sophisticated himself before he went on the Roads. “Will we have trouble with them?”

“No, mildy, for they worship the instrument you play. It is their totem. But when you reach the third falls, where the river will be impossible to use, you will find the people of Dacitti. They are a surly folk, not welcoming of outsiders. But they can tell you of the Well of the Sun.”

“The Well of the Sun?”

But the tavern-master shook his head. “That is a long and very dry telling.”

Méarana took the hint and reached into her scrip for a gold Fredrik. These bore the image of a recent Qaysar in Riverbridge, one who claimed, through marriage to marriage, a tenuous connection to the old imperial house. The current Qaysar, who really did have the old blood, had not bothered with such pretensions. The coin rang on the tabletop. “My men are thirsty, too,” she said.

The tavern-master grinned and the coin did not bounce a second time before he had it for his own. He ducked swiftly behind the counter and poured three drinks from the same barrel and a fourth, his own, from another. When he set the mugs down before them, Billy laid a hand on the man’s arm to stay him. “What was in the second barrel, friend?”

The old man blinked, puzzled. Paulie loosed the sword in his scabbard. “But I follow Owl,” the tavern-master said, “and surely you do not!”

“Old man,” said Billy, “you obviously believe you have explained something, but you have not; and the time grows short in which you may.”

“Billy…,” said Méarana.

“Fermented beverages are forbidden to the children of Owl! If you’d drink a wee drop of the fruit nectar with me, sure and I would be pleased to pour it. Are there those among you who shun the creature as we do?”

Paulie suppressed a snicker. “How could you receive a vision from the gods without mead?” Méarana also accepted the beer, which was flat and room temperature. Enjrun had not yet rediscovered either carbonation or refrigeration. Billy shrugged and said he would try a nectar of peaches.

When everyone was settled once more, the tavern-master said, “As it once was in the long ago…”

The door to the wharf swung open and Donovan strode in with Zhawn Sloofy close behind balancing on his head what looked like a metaloceramic panel. “Make it not so long ago, Djespa. Save the long version for those who don’t pay in gold.”

Paulie protested, “I like a good story.”

“You and he can stay up late swapping yarns, then.”

The tavern-master shrugged. “As you will. The Well of the Sun is at the Edge of the World, about…here.” His finger entered the hologram a little way north of Dacitti, and he hastily withdrew it and wiped it on his qamis, the baggy shirt favored around Rajiloor. Since the map clearly showed more world beyond the Edge, the Gaelactics smiled. “The story is that there is a tribe high up in the western Kobberjobbles that eats only once a day. They have a very deep well, which they fill with water; and into this well they toss the meats and vegetables that they have spent the day hunting and preparing. When the sun goes down to his place of rest, he falls into this very well and, of course, boils the water…”

“Of course,” said Billy. Méarana glared at him.

“…and this cooks the food, for the sun is quite hot, as you may know. Then, once night is fallen and the sun has cooled, the tribe draws up the meat and vegetables into a kind of stew called moogan, on which they gorge themselves, for they will not eat again until next sunset.”

“One question,” said Billy with a tightly controlled countenance. “The sun fell into the well, right? So how does it get out and run around to the other side of the world in time to rise in the morning?”

Djespa the tavern-master showed surprise. “But your honor, all men know that the world is a ball and the sun goes around it, so that though it seems to touch the ground far off in the west, it is only passing beyond the horizon. Surely, you regarders are as knowledgeable in such matters as our own failingsoofs.”

“Now, my good Djespa,” said Donovan, “if you would serve a pot of that fine beer for my man Sloofy and myself?”

“Not the peach nectar?” asked Méarana.

“Of course not,” Donovan told her. “All sorts of bacteria out here in the Wild that our specifics don’t recognize. Ask Sofwari about it. But nothing that can hurt a man can live in a pot of beer. It’s the alcohol, you see. What’s the matter with Billy?”

“Nothing. Did you hire the boats we need?”

“I did. And an interpreter who savvies the lingo in the Roaring Gorge. His name’s Djamos Tul. He’s a Gorgeous pack peddler, and will be joining us once he finishes selling his pigeons. They say the river will be more settled by then.” Donovan took his pot and went to stand over the holomap. ‘We wish this thing had better resolution.” He waved the mug. “We’re not blaming Maggie B. The spysats are just to check for wars or tribal migrations, not to look for footpaths up the sides of cliffs out where they’re never going to go. Sofwari back yet?”

“No. I don’t expect him until dinnertime. You know how involved he gets in his work.”

“He has a funny idea about work. We brought back a bit of trash he might find interesting.” Donovan hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the panel that Sloofy had propped up against the wall. “There’s an ancient city not far from here and the Rajilooris salvage materials from the ruins to shore up the terraces during the ‘soons.”

The scarred man held a huge amusement behind his belt and needed to loosen it and let it out. So the harper sighed and, taking her beer with her, walked over to the wall where the panel stood. Billy and Paulie joined her. Sloofy only shook his head at the insanity of regarders and applied himself to his beer.

It was metaloceramic. And who in the Wild knew how to make such stuff? She said, “Why, this must date from…”

“From the First Ships?” said Donovan. “From that era, certainly. The ruins these people are scrounging from may be the remnants of the oldest settlement on this world.”

“Infamous!”

“Don’t see why,” said Djespa. “We need to keep the mound shored up, else it’d wash away in the next flood. What good does this stuff do, buried out there under the mud and sand?”

Paulie O’ the Hawks agreed with him; Billy shrugged. “A culture has the sciences it can afford. If they didn’t salvage this material, their own town would soon join it under the mud. Do you really want to ask that of them?”

But Méarana did not answer him, because she had already seen what Donovan had wanted her to see. Across one end of the panel ran the squiggly script used by the’ Loons of Harpaloon. “I think I know,” she said slowly, “what friend Sofwari will find in his little thread shapes.”

Donovan nodded. “That the’ Loons came from here…”

Djespa said, “‘Loons, you say? Why, that be the name of the junk-quarry. Madéen O’ Loons, as what the riverfolk call it. Madéen is a town; loon is a sickle blade.”

“It was also,” Donovan said with sudden thoughtfulness, “the name of Terra’s moon. Luna.”

Djespa turned and spat into a bucket. “Terrans!” he said. “Faithless djinni that lure people to their doom!”

The company set out two days later in three durms. These were massive, flat-bottomed boats, built of thumb-thick oak planks coated with tar from the seepages near Black Springs. Each was twelve double-paces in length and nearly three arm-reaches wide at the midpoint, and required a crew of five to handle.

Méarana and Sofwari rode in the lead boat, the Madareenaroo, with Djamos Tul, their new guide. They sat on cross-benches that ran athwart the boat. Donovan and Billy Chins rode in the Green Swan together. The two bodyguards rode in the Gadlin with Sloofy. The space between the benches was packed with their luggage, supplies, and trade goods.

The boatmen themselves were a stolid lot and said little beyond the perfunctory greetings and instructions. “We take you to Candletown near the Roaring Falls,” the head sweeper said. “Twelve Freddies for each boat. Six up, and six we gotta go back after we drop you off.” Then he took a position in the rear of the boat and the others unshipped great sweeps and placed them in the locks. “Jennelmen,” the steersman called out. “Dock-side two, push off light! Push!”

One of the oarsmen shoved against the pier with his sweep. “Bow pair, maintain the gain.” The two forward oarsmen stroked against the current while they waited for the other two boats to assume position. When the steersman had assured himself that all was ready, he called out, “All four, normal pull, full stroke.” He waited until the two bowsmen completed a stroke, then called, “Stroke!” and the two stemmen dipped into the water in synch with their brethren, pulling hard with the full length of their bodies. “Eki dumah!” the sweeper announced and then sang out a rhythm:

“Kay, kay-kay, kay.”

To which the rowers responded:

“Eki dumah!”

On Eki, all four oars pulled together.

“Kay, kay-kay, kay.”

“Eki dumah!”

Under this steady rhythm, the boat began to make way against the current. Behind them, Méarana could hear the other boats calling similar rhythms. After a while, she pulled her clairseach from its case and began to play along. One of the bowsman looked up in surprise and his oar caught a crab and smacked into the sternman’s oar. The steersman hollered at them in the riverman argot and quickly had them back in synch, but by then the Green Swan had passed them, jeering and shouting “lu-lu-lu!” The Swan’s sweeper showed his ass.

“Our steersman does not seem happy with you,” Sofwari said. “He glowers. Perhaps your music can charm him as it charms me.” He shifted to the bench ahead and sat facing the harper. “You play so beautifully.”

“I can play ugly if you wish. My range is wide, and music has many purposes.”

“None higher than beauty, and no purpose greater than simply to be.”

Méarana strummed a bit of goltraí, but softly, so as not to distract the boatmen. “I think you have confused art with entertainment.”

Sofwari opened his mouth to speak, but second-thought stopped him. “I’ll consider that. I’ve only ever been on one side of the music.”

She shifted to the “War Song of Clanthompson,” a tune handed down in her family from the dark age after the diaspora. Fierce, angry, dissonant, and full of wild vengeance, it caused Sofwari to shiver. She stilled the strings with the flat of her hand. “Was that ‘pretty’?” she challenged him.

“I never said ‘pretty.’ I said ‘beautiful,’ and there is more than one kind of beauty. There is beauty in the golden skin and flaming hair of a fierce young woman; but there is wild beauty even in tragedy and death. There is nothing delicate or fragile about it.”

The harper regarded him for a moment in silence. “Now it is you who gives me pause.”

“Almost,” he said. “I am glad your mother is lost. Otherwise, I might never have met you.”

Méarana smiled. “Your second thought saved you from the penalty incurred by the first. But don’t try to be too clever. I’m not one to be gulled by clever words.”

Sofwari bobbed his head. “I’ll speak no parables if you will simply play.”

The boatmen ate lunch on the river, taking turns, but they drew their boats up on the west bank when it was time for evenmeal. Because of the long curve in the rivercourse, the west bank caught the lee of the flood and so the silt was less deep. Stepping out of the boat, the right bowman pressed a copper coin into Méarana’s hand. “Yez honor th’boat,” he said in a thickly accented imperial.

The rivermen had with them a flask of what they called dis; oil, which they used to ignite the still damp-wood they gathered for their fires. This oil was distilled from the rotted remains of the ulmo tree in the far south. A fungus that grew within the tree consumed its woody part and altered it to the oil. Donovan wondered if this were a natural thing, or one that had been created by the fabled engineers of old Commonwealth days.

On the second eve, they reached the ruins of Madéen O’ Loons. Broken columns and walls and statues emerging from the mud revealed where portions of the city lay buried. The boatmen ignored the place, save to pull a panel from the ground to use as a makeshift table; but the Gaelactics explored the ruins. Even Teodorq was impressed.

He had found a statue whose face had been exposed by the recent flood. “This here is one stubborn fella,” the Wildman said. “Look at the eyes and the chin. Do you suppose these people were black, or is that just the stone they used for the statue?”

Donovan found what he supposed the base of the statue, which bore an inscription in the old Tantamiž script. “Hold fast forever,” he read, slowly puzzling it out.

Teodorq looked about the ruins. “What happened to them?”

“Forever came and went.”

Sofwari and Méarana wandered to the higher ground that marked the center of the site. From it, the science-wallah surveyed the vast, treeless, mud-covered plain east of the river and shook his head. “It is as if man and all his works have been wiped from the face of Enjrun,” he told the harper. Three fires burned on the sandy shelf by the river bank, and the smell of wood and flame and meat were carried to them on the now-gentle southern breeze. “We might almost be the last survivors, in a few lonely boats, of a vast world-scraping tsunami.”

Méarana was deaf to his poetry. She faced west and could spy in the far-off distance the glow of the Kobberjobbles that still caught the daylight on their peaks. “Up there somewhere,” she said. “That’s where she went.”

Sofwari caught her hand. “You won’t find her there. Her ship would still be in orbit, otherwise.”

She pulled her hand from his. “I know that. But I may learn why she went there, and given that, where she was bound.”

“I didn’t believe her, you know, when she and I spoke on Thistlewaite. I thought the tale of the Treasure Fleet was pure fable; but she made the leap right off from my anomalies to the old legend. A leap of faith, for she had no data to prove her theory.”

“Mother never let a few facts get in the way of a good theory.”

“That’s why we science-wallahs only tabulate facts. We describe what happens and how it happens. But why it happens…?” He shrugged. “Is gravity a form of love, as many say? All we can know is that it is the nature of matter to attract matter, as Shree Einstein decreed. To answer why it is natural exceeds our writ.”

“Does that not make you feel limited?”

“Oh, no, Lucy! I have the whole of the universe to play with—from the little thread shapes all the way to galaxies, and everything in between. That there is more, who can deny? There is love and justice and beauty—and hate and bias and ugliness.”

“No, Debly, those last three don’t exist. They are only the names we use when the good is absent. And the opposite of justice is not bias, but fate; and the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. And there is no thing that exists that lacks for beauty. You told me that yourself.”

“So I did,” Sofwari said in mild wonder. The breeze quickened and he shivered. “The damp air has given the sunset a chill.” He put an arm around her shoulder. “You may share my cloak, if you wish.”

“For a while, Debly. For a while. There. At the eastern horizon. That’s the Spiral Arm peeking up. What did they call it?”

“The nuxru noorin. The river of light.”

“Dangchao seems so far away. As if it were in a different universe.”

Sofwari hesitated. “Did you…know that Donovan is your father?”

Méarana turned to him in surprise. “Did he tell you that?”

“No. He never speaks of his past. A man might suppose he didn’t have one. I tested his little thread shapes, and yours…”

“I thought your sinlaptai passed only from mother to daughter!”

“Those of the mighty chondrians do. But there are other thread shapes. If you think there is a vast universe out there in the sky, it is nothing to the vast universe inside each one of us.”

“If the universe is infinite, I suppose it is only fitting that we be, too. Why did you think I did not know?”

“The two of you do not act as father and daughter. Only, sometimes, when you look at each other.”

“There is a history between us. Or rather, an absence of history.”

“Oh?”

“The rest, you need not know.”

They walked a little farther through the mud.

“I look at these ruins here…” Sofwari kicked at a shard poking up through the mud. “I am a bone-picker. I will never discover anything. I will only rediscover it. Whatever I may learn, someone unknown learned it ages ago.”

Méarana said, “It might have been better if we had forgotten all this entirely—all the legends, all the wonders—for we live forever in its shadow.” She leaned against him.

“No. As much pain as it causes me, ignorance is never better. It was not all wonder. There was decay and war and collapse. If all we can hope for is to repeat the glories of the past, then we can hope not to repeat the mistakes.”

They heard Roaring Gorge before they saw it. It was a narrow cleft in the foothills of the Kobberjobbles—like a slit in a wall—and it howled and moaned at their approach, as if some great beast crouched within. Sloofy trembled in fear and even Sofwari seemed alarmed for a moment. Then he laughed and said, “The gorge acts like a megaphone for the waterfall at the farther end.”

The steersman heard them and he said, “Sure, but the roar of the waterfall might also cover the roar of a genuine dragon.” He laughed without waiting to see if he had alarmed them. The other boatmen laughed, too, but Méarana noted how they looked at their passengers sidewise, licked their lips, rubbed their hands.

Anticipation; but not a little fear beside. Surely, they had been through the gorge often enough to know there was no dragon.

The river narrowed and the current grew swift. The oarsmen pulled the cotter pins and lowered the walking planks that ran the length of the boat on each side. Then, two at a time, they shipped their oars and took up “setting poles” battened to the inside hull. These poles were almost as long as the boat itself. The two stemmen stepped out onto the walking boards and went to the bow of the boat, where they lowered the poles into the water. “Bottom!” one of them called, and the sweeper acknowledged. Then they put their shoulders to the leather-padded butts on the poles and began walking toward the stern, punting the boat ahead. Then the two bowmen stowed their oars and did the same, so that the four men were now walking stem to stern, pushing against the current. One of the stemmen said something low and angry to the steersman when he reached the back end of the boat, and the steersman pointed emphatically to the shoreline. Méarana looked where he pointed, but saw nothing out of the ordinary.

She took up her harp and began to play at random—a jig, a taarab, a halay. She adjusted the tempos to match that of the men walking the setting poles, and the steersman grinned and beat the tempo against the handle of his steering oar. The right bowman, when he reached the head of the plank, glanced across to his counterpart and, ever so slightly, shook his head, a gesture his companion repeated before they put shoulder to pole and pushed.

They made night-camp on a sandy shelf on the east side of the river where the cliffside had broken away into rubble. Upstream the river vanished into a mist created by the waterfall at the far end of the gorge. The roar was, oddly, more muted inside the canyon than at the approach, but they still had to speak up to be heard.

Donovan was the last out of the boats and when he set foot on the ground, he said in a distinct, though conversational tone, “Is that a sand viper?” And then, almost immediately, “But no, it is only a branch buried in the mud.”

It struck Méarana as a curious performance—and she did not doubt for a moment that it was a performance, for Donovan did little without intent. She and the two Wildmen erected the tent. The boatmen had grown used to the tent-that-pitched-itself, and no longer gathered around to gawk openmouthed when Méarana activated the equipment.

Billy Chins and Donovan approached, talking in Confederal Manjrin. Donovan bent and looked inside the tent.

“Where are Teddy and Paulie?” he asked.

“They went back the boats for our supplies.”

“Sofwari,” said Billy, “go fetch-them.”

The science-wallah looked to Donovan, who nodded.

“What’s going on?” Méarana asked when Sofwari was gone.

“Trouble,” said Billy.

“Nothing, we hope,” said Donovan.

“I’m glad for the warning, whichever it is.” Méarana retrieved her harp. She was still tuning it when the others returned.

Once they were gathered round, Donovan told them that Billy thought the boatmen were planning something.

“I thought so before we cast off,” the Confederate said. “The old taverner was too concerned that we expect peaceful passage through Roaring Gorge, and a little too unconcerned with our gold and silver.”

“I believe him,” said Donovan. “When I claimed to see a sand viper, I spoke Gaelactic. But several of our ‘friends’ turned around in alarm. I pretended to take no notice, and I don’t think they gave it second thoughts.”

“They have earwigs,” said Méarana.

“Or they’ve had force-learning. But in either case, why conceal their understanding? They want to know what we are saying without letting us know they knew.”

“I saw you test them,” said Billy. “There were only four who reacted.”

Donovan nodded. “Earwigs cannot be all that plentiful here. The sweeper on each boat has one.” He looked at Theodorq. “Go find Sloofy and bring him here.” The Wildman nodded and trotted off.

“Meaning no disrespect to Billy,” Donovan continued, “I doubt a Rajiloor tavern-master has the wealth to subborn fifteen rivermen. Earlier today, we passed a boundary cairn on the riverbank. We passed from Rajiloor to Jebelsanmèesh.”

Sloofy entered the tent, followed by Teodorq. The Wildman had loosened the thong on his scabbard.

The translator smiled. “What do my masters want with Sloofy?” But his smile slowly faded to match the faces he saw around him. “Have I done something to displease?”

Donovan spoke to him in clear Gaelactic. “When do they plan to strike?”

The translator went pale. He stammered ignorance, but Billy shook his head. “That will not do. We know everything. You need only tell us the rest.”

It was a formula that had struck terror in many hearts; but it meant nothing to Sloofy.

“My companion,” said Donovan, to make the matter plain, “practices an art by which others are brought to answer questions.”

Now Sloofy began to tremble. “No, a’yaih. I am but a piece played on the shadranech board of great men.”

“If you are so worthless,” Billy suggested, “you will not be missed.”

“I think,” said Méarana kindly, “that you had better tell us everything.”

Sloofy turned to her as if to his savior. “Yes, O sadie. I will withhold nothing!”

“It was the Rice of Jebelsanmèesh who hired you?” said Donovan.

“My master knows all things. Men of his gave me coins to purchase the boatmen, and promise of more when…the deed…was done.”

Méarana turned to her father. “Lafeev seemed friendly when we spoke.”

“But the Rice of Jebelsanmèesh,” Donovan said, “is also the Dūq of the jewelry trade. And we are searching for the source of one of his best exports.”

“But we’re not interested in the jewelry,” Méarana said. “We’re looking for my mother.”

“Lafeev could not imagine why anyone would go on such a mad quest. And I can’t say I blame him. He decided it was a cover for our true purpose, which was to cut him out of the jewel trade.”

Billy said, “A mind already wary will gaze on all with suspicion.”

“When did they plan to strike?” Donovan asked the translator again.

Sloofy stammered. “They will kill me if I tell you.”

Billy said, “And we will kill you if you don’t.” He spread his hands in helplessness.

“Hell of a dilemma,” said Teodorq. “Ain’t it?”

Billy continued. “But consider that at our hands, it might take far longer. You might live for many days before the jackals and kites find you.”

Paulie said, “He don’t look so happy about a longer life.”

Donovan asked gently, “Are all the boatmen in the plot?”

The translator nodded. “No. There are three who have not been told, because they are not blood relatives. Neither has the abominable Djamos, whose mother was a slut from the gorge. When the hammer falls, these four will be given the choice to join the boatmen or to join you with the fishes.”

“Tough choice,” Paulie acknowledged.

Donovan looked across his shoulder. “Teodorq?”

“Aye, boss. I’ll fetch ‘im.” And he ducked out the tent flap.

“When were they to carry out this deed?” Donovan continued to Sloofy.

“After we have crossed into Jebelsanmèesh, lest the deed offend the Qaysar of Rajiloor, and a little ways into the Roaring Gorge, so that blame may be laid upon the Gorgeous Folk.” Sloofy swallowed hard. “Likely tonight, after you are asleep, and they have rested from their punting.”

“Not farther up the gorge?”

“No, lord. They want to blame the Gorgeous, not actually encounter them.”

Donovan nodded, looked at the others. “There you have it. Do you see any problems?”

Billy shook his head. “Yes. How are we to handle three durm boats if all the boatmen are dead?”

“We’ll manage somehow,” Donovan said. “Depends on the other three, I guess.”

Teodorq re-entered with Djamos held by the scruff of his neck. “Found him, boss. Where do you want him?”

But Sloofy said, “The gods have maddened you. You face twelve men, at least. You have only two fighting men. And maybe this one—” He indicated Billy. “—is more than mere talk. But the soft one will be as nothing in a fight, and what use an old man and a bini?”

Donovan looked at Teodorq. “What do you think?”

Nagarajan scratched his head. “Three boats-full? I can handle one. Paulie can maybe handle most of the second. That leaves five for the rest of you. I don’t think this thing-found-on-my-shoe-bottom understands what his friends are biting off.”

The confidence of the “regarders” was beginning to undermine the translator’s certainty. Méarana only wished it would bolster hers. But she knew not to show fear in front of the enemy. “I could play my harp,” she suggested.

Billy began to laugh, but Donovan shushed him and both Sloofy and Djamos showed genuine alarm. Sloofy tried again. “Your occult arts will not help you.”

Donovan turned to Djamos. “How much do you know about this?” he asked in the language of Riverbridge.

Djamos glanced at his colleague. “I knew these downstream dogs planned something ill, but I thought to stand aside and see how things played out.”

“There’s a brave soul,” said Paulie.

Djamos shrugged. “Foolish is the man who dies in another’s quarrel.” But he saw the faces of Donovan and Billy, and he said, “But I see that the matter is settled, so let it be fighting the downriver dogs rather than aiding them.”

They did not kill Sloofy. Billy wanted to, but Donovan said that would alert the boatmen. Instead, he would join them at their fire, which they built farther up the shelf, away from the others. In the dim light, it would not be evident that Sloofy was bound and gagged. Billy cautioned him to sit still because if he tried to raise an alarm he would die “the first death and the last.” Sloofy understood. “What do I owe those upriver wharf rats?” he asked before they jammed the ball in his mouth. It was a rhetorical question. By his own admission, he owed them the second installment of Lafeev’s payment.

“A man who is willing to kill another for his gold,” Donovan told Méarana, “is seldom willing to die for it.”

Méarana placed a camp chair outside the tent and perched her harp on her lap. She tuned it to the third mode, humming a bit to herself. The boatmen lay about on blankets a little ways off and watched with some curiosity. One man spread an ointment on another’s shoulders. Yes, it could not have been an easy day for them, working the setting poles. Yet while it had been needful to reach the gorge before doing the deed, they did not want to linger too long in this place.

She remembered how they had rubbed their hands, licked their lips. Not anticipation, she realized. They were wharfside thugs, not professional assassins. They must nerve themselves up to the deed. They would probably start drinking soon.

She sang the “Tragedy of Hendryk Shang.” A well-known poem on Die Bold, the translation into the loor nuxtjes’r was tricky. She rehearsed the words sotto vocee, letting the earwig suggest the proper phrasing, then doing it over because she wanted a poetic translation, not a literal one. She was not entirely happy, for the poetic standards for the two languages were very different; but great poetry was not her intent.

Hendryk Shang had famously sold his lord to his enemies for a bag of silver coins. But once Lord Venable was in his enemy’s clutches, his captors refused to pay Shang, and so the man was left with no money, no lord, and no honor. Méarana sang the tale not as that of a good but desperate man who had succumbed to temptation. Such subtleties were for the concert halls of Èlfiuji not a sandy bench in the Roaring Gorge. She sang it as a satire. Shang as an object of ridicule and shame to his family, his friends, his profession.

The boatmen were only half-listening, but Méarana noted how some shifted uncomfortably and two moved off a little way from the others and proceeded to get into an intense discussion with each other.

Afterward, she played ominously in the goltraí, disturbing their rest. When she was finished, she returned to the tent. Teodorq grinned at her. “I’d hate to have you mad at me, babe.”

Djamos the translator was trembling and stared at the harp with bulging eyes. “You are not from here,” he said again and again.

They sat huddled in the tent while different constellations appeared in the sky above the gorge. “Just before dawn?” said Donovan.

Teodorq nodded. “Makes sense, boss.”

They took turns sleeping, but when it came her turn, Méarana could not sleep. She curled up in her bag and closed her eyes, but sleep was not there.

Or she thought it was not, for the next she knew, Donovan was shaking her shoulder. He held a finger to his lip. “They’re coming.”

“How many?”

“Three stayed behind. I don’t think they like this, but don’t see how they can stop it.” He opened the back flap of the tent. “Teddy, Paulie, you’ll go out the front. Billy and I will go out the back and flank them.”

Debly Sofwari said, “What am I to do?”

“Do you have a weapon?”

He nodded.

“Do you know how to use it?”

He nodded again.

“Then use it.”

“I’ve…But I’ve only ever shot vermin. In fieldwork.”

Donovan nodded. “Good. Just bigger vermin here.” He started out the back, then turned. “Try not to shoot your friends.”

Teodorq pulled out his “nine” and chambered a round. Paulie looked at him. “You ain’t gonna use your sword?”

“Why should I?”

Méarana was watching through the grill in the tent flap. “They’ve reached the fire. They found Sloofy. He’s untied. Look lively. They know we know.”

Realizing that surprise had been lost, the boatmen shouted and came at the tent in a rush. Teddy and Paulie burst out the front, the latter swinging his broadsword while Teddy went to one knee and braced his hand. He fired once, twice. A man fell. Paulie sliced the arm off a second. One bowled into Méarana and drove her to the ground. Her knife shot out and she stabbed him four times, rapidly, in the gut. He rolled off, groaning and clutching himself, and Sofwari stepped over and fried his brains with a dazer. The others scuttled back. This opened them to fire from Billy and Donovan, who had taken a position behind some rocks on the left. Another man dropped. Two more clutched parts of their bodies and staggered.

Then the boatmen retreated out of range and rummaged in their boats. Teodorq turned to Paulie. “That can’t be good.”

It wasn’t. Boatmen going up the Twisted River sometimes had to hunt for their dinner, and a compound hunting bow had considerable range and penetration. They were arguing among themselves. Some were pointing to the boats. Méarana supposed these wanted simply to leave. The others, perhaps transported by rage, strung bows with grim concentration. They called out to the three men who had stood aside; but these replied by signs that they wanted nothing to do with the treachery.

“Come on,” said Sofwari, taking her by the arm. “Behind the rocks with Donovan.” As they retreated toward the shelf in the cliffside, Djamos paused at each man down and stilled his cries with a swipe of a curved knife blade across the throat.

“Not that one,” called Billy. “I made a promise.”

The Gorgeous pack trader looked down at the bleeding Sloofy. “You are a fool of a downriverman. You should have joined the starmen.”

Sloofy replied between taut white lips, “Death was my destination. Does it matter who sees me off?”

Djamos withheld his blade and patted Sloofy on the cheek. “Enjoy the trip.”

When the pack trader joined them behind the rocks, Méarana noticed that Paulie still stood beside the tent with his sword cocked at his right shoulder. Blood ran down the blade and out the pommel to drip on the sand by his feet.

Teodorq called to him. “You coming, hillbilly?”

“Just a sec. There’s something I always wanted to try.”

One of the boatman had gotten his bow strung and now fitted a quarrel to the string. He stepped cautiously along the riverside, sure of his own range, but uncertain of the starweapons. But there was something about the brawny man dressed in serge de Nîmes standing so calmly. He raised and loosed.

And Paulie whirled and swung…and the arrow spun off in two neatly-cleaved parts.

Paulie leaped for the rocks then and vaulted them ahead of a second arrow that glanced off the cliff face.

Teodorq nodded. “Not bad. Wanna try it again?” He nodded toward the boats, where all three archers were now armed.

Paulie stared at him. “Do I look crazy?”

Donovan said, “They’ll try to work their way up on our right.” The pocket had no natural barrier in that direction. “They’ll stay out of range of the beam weapons. Teodorq, you’ve got the best range here. How many bullets do you have left for your pellet gun?”

“In the magazine, or back in the tent?”

“Maybe they’ll just leave us here,” suggested Sofwari.

“They ain’t fighting for no medals,” agreed Theodorq.

Donovan powered down his dazer to save on the battery. He shook his head. “They want our gold and silver.”

“That’s in the chests on the boat,” said Sofwari.

But Billy chuckled. “Tell him, Donovan.”

“The money chest is in the tent. I switched it with your equipment chest. They’ll figure that out once they look inside.”

Teodorq braced his hand atop one of the rocks and tried a long shot at one of the archers. The bullet struck the man in the ankle and he howled, fell to the ground, rolled away. His mates went to him and carried him to the Gadlin, which was farthest from them. Then they fell to arguing with one another again.

Méarana sang out in the local tongue:

Billy snorted. “Sticks and stone can break their bones; but not words.”

“Don’t be too sure,” said Méarana. “They take curses and satires very seriously in the north, and some of the boatmen are northern-bred.”

“Think of it as psychological warfare,” said Donovan. “What else can we throw at them?”

“Sahbs,” said Theodorq. “Upstream.”

From out of the mist slipped the silent shapes of four large war canoes. The heads of beasts adorned their prows. The sound of their paddling was lost in the rumble of the falls. Djamos rose to his feet and cried, “The canyon! The canyon!” And ducked before the arrow he had tempted from the rivermen struck the rocks behind him.

Donovan looked at Billy. “My apologies,” he said. “You were right.”

The Confederate shrugged. “If Djespa could not buy so many river-men, he could surely buy his own cousins.”

Djamos said, “There is no price among brothers.”

The men in the canoes laid their paddles aside and notched longbows while the canoes carried them silently forward. The command to loose must have been audible on the riverbank, for the boatmen spun suddenly about and their chests blossomed with feathered shafts. The two archers returned the favor, picking off two of the attacking party. Another man ran for the bow dropped by the third archer, but the attackers pinned him neatly to the sand. The three men who had stayed out of the fight ran for the cliffs, and two of them made it behind the rocks.

The Madareenaroo scraped off the sand and into the current with the surviving boatmen scrambling aboard. One fell off the gunnel with an arrow in his back. The durm spun slowly as the current carried it downstream. No one exposed himself at the sweep to keep her steady. A canoe caught up with her and pulled alongside. Men leaped from the canoe to pull themselves up the side. But now the adwantage was with the boatmen, for the sides of the durm were high and they could fight back from a tactical height. Finally, the canoe’s captain gave up and backed off. The Rajilooris jeered their attackers as they drifted away, as if they had won some sort of victory.

One of the boatmen who had made it to the rocks looked over to Méarana. “I wanted no part of it,” he said. “You must believe me, Lady Harp.” He made a motion like scratching his chest. She recognized him as the man who had given her the token payment.

“I believe you, Watershank,” she told him. “You have acted with honor throughout.”

Djamos moved swiftly, and his curled blade was out and at Méarana’s throat before anyone knew that he had moved. “And now let us await my kinfolk,” he said. “No. Make no move, or the harper’s voice is stilled forever. And you, harper: If your lips part in a satire, your throat will sing before your lips.”

Billy said quietly, “You are making a grave error.”

The marauders in the canoes had beached themselves and now swarmed over the boats, tearing bundles open. Clothing and equipment were strewn on the sand. “My instruments!” groaned Sofawri. “My data!”

“It’s not your head,” growled Donovan, “at least not yet.” He pressed the stud on his dazer and the green light began to blink. Billy noticed and carefully slipped his own gun into his crotch. Theodorq’s nine had disappeared.

A contingent of warriors approached the tent. “All of you!” said Djamos. “Place your hands on your head! You, Paw-lee, put down the sword!” Then he stood, holding Méarana, and called out, “The canyon! The canyon!”

One of the warriors sent an arrow through Djamos’s neck. The translator had no time even to register surprise, but opened his mouth in a gush of blood. Méarana spun away and Sofwari caught her. The warriors drew bows on the embattled group and one of them barked something incomprehensible, motioning with the arrowhead.

Watershank, the boatman, exclaimed and responded in the same tongue. The war chief rattled a command and Watershank opened his shirt to expose an intricate tattoo of a harp. This seemed to satisfy the chief, who motioned to Watershank to join them.

Watershank did not move. “Chief says, are any else here degenerate dog-farking gorge-dwellers?”

“Well,” murmured Billy, “not if he asks that way.”

“Watershank,” Méarana said. “Tell him who we are.”

“These people do not understand ‘starmen,’ Lady. I do not know if I can explain.” He spoke again, making signs with his hands. The chief grunted and glanced at Méarana. He asked a question. “Chief says, where is your harp?”

“In my tent. Does he want me to fetch it?”

“Chief says, if you are harper, you can play—how do you say ‘on the moment, without previous hearing it’?”

“Extempore.”

“If you are harper, you can extempore a praise of his feat here in besting the mighty downriverfolk.”

Méarana doubted such a lay would include the escape of one of the boats, or even a realistic assessment of the might of a band of wharfside thugs. “Does he expect me to use the tropes of the Harp—you are Harps—or may I use the tropes of my own world?”

Watershank grunted and said, “I will say your own country.”

“Tell him my country lies far up the gozán lonnrooda, high up the side of the Mountain of Night.”

Watershank looked frightened at this. “My Lady!” he wailed. “I did not know!” Then he turned to the chief and the two discoursed quickly and vehemently. Méarana did not know whether they were arguing or that was the normal timbre of their language. Then Watershank turned to her.

“Chief say, as riverfolk would have it, put the money in your mouth.”

“I will go into the tent and fetch my harp. No one will stop me.”

Donovan whispered in Gaelactic, “Méarana, are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

She answered in the same tongue. “I told you. My mother trained me.” She stepped through the warriors, more of whom had come curiously from looting the boats. Bows followed her, sweating bravos stepped back with uncertain looks. She heard the term crootài several times, and wondered if that were the local term for harper.

Inside the tent, she fell to her knees before her satchel and trembled. A body lay in the entrance to the tent and she remembered that a scant hour before she had killed that man. Mother had been right. When the time came, her training had held and no hesitation had stayed her hand.

Her fingers shook as she took the satchel and she paused a moment to gather herself. She remembered what Donovan had told her once. It is much harder to risk another’s life than to risk your own.

Unsnapping the clasps, she removed the bolt of anycloth and inserted the datathread into her communicator. She searched through the memory until she found the image she wanted.

Then she slung her harp case over her shoulder, stepped across the body in the entrance, and walked uphill toward her companions. Passing Sloofy on the way, she saw that a Harp warrior had smashed his skull in. She wondered if the unfortunate Nuxrjes’ri had welcomed surcease by then and what it must be like to die so far from home amidst angry strangers.

Méarana wasted no tears on him. He had gone out looking for trouble, and ought have had no complaint at finding it. But she saw no good in using him cruelly, and gave thanks to her God that the Harp warrior had ended his pain.

She found a pole that one of the boatmen had been using as a quarterstaff in the attack. (How futile and pathetic their effort seemed now! But a man is as dead brained with a quarterstaff as he is when fried by a dazer.) She attached the anycloth to the staff and stabbed the pole into the ground.

The southern breeze caught the cloth and unfurled it. It was the green banner of Harpaloon: the harp embraced by the crescent moon.

Their captors jabbered excitedly among themselves. Then the chief stepped forward and embraced Méarana, kissing her lightly on each cheek.

“You have come at last,” Watershank translated for him. “You have come at last.”