The others grumbled: the auction was quite far away, apparently. But their chief had spoken, and they obeyed.
Soon Pazel was back in the water, this time in the bottom of a narrow boat like a cross between a decrepit fishing-dory and a gondola. With their flat feet on top of him, his captors poled down a long, dark, dripping tunnel. What it had been built for Pazel could scarcely guess, but it was clearly one of the secret ways the Flikkers moved children in and out of the city. They turned corners, ducked under low ceilings, opened moss-covered gates. Eventually they sat him up and pressed a flask to his lips. What he swallowed was sweet and briny and rushed to his head like wine.
On and on they went. At length the Flikkermen began to sing. Theirs was a cold, swift, mournful music, like that of a river approached in darkness, and it made Pazel wonder for the first time just who they were, these Flikkermen, these people who never went to sea, and lived as a race apart in the cities of humankind.
We cut the sod where the gold wheat grows.
We dropped the seed of the poplar groves.
Men all forget, we sing it yet:
We still recall where the deep flood goes.
We felled the trees for the conquering fleet.
We dug the ore for the blacksmith's heat.
Twilight to dawn and a century's gone:
We lay the cobbles beneath your feet.
Fearsome the wind o'er the stolen earth.
Fearsome the morning of our rebirth.
Dawn-light to day the Flikkermen say:
We set the price of your children's worth.
Do not tarry where the schoolyard ends.
Do not linger where the alley bends.
New blossoms pale, empires fail:
We keep the coin the world expends.
Wind shall tear pennant from heartless tower.
River shall rise and wave devour.
Men all forget on what road we met:
We shall be kings in the final hour.
The last words were scarcely out of their mouths when the next song began. Pazel's head still swam with the drink. Soon he found himself drifting into miserable sleep in which the voices sang on, conjuring stories of lost tribes and swamp banquets and Flikker queens with onyx crowns and shawls of butterfly wings.
At some point he half woke, and found himself no longer underground. The boat was now gliding down a river under a brilliant moon. The banks were high, the land dew-soaked and desolate. A few stone farmhouses squatted in the distance, lamplight blazing in their windows, and once a riderless horse pranced and nickered at them from behind a fence, but there was no one to whom he might have shouted for help.
He slept, and woke again, and it was day. The boat was surrounded by reeds and tall marsh grass; Pazel could not even see the open river. They were anchored, and the Flikkers were eating cold fish and hot peppers wrapped in some sort of leaves. When they were finished one propped him up and gave him another long drink of the salty-sweet wine. Then they checked his ropes, washed their faces with marsh water, and curled up in the boat to sleep. In a few minutes the wine did its work, and Pazel dropped forward among his captors.
He woke after nightfall, sunburned and hungry. They were back on the river. Other boats ran close beside them; other Flikkermen had joined his captors' songs. Pazel saw prisoners bound like himself, weariness and terror mingled in their looks. The countryside was open and silver by moonlight, but there was no sign of farmland or any human dwelling. After another sip of the ubiquitous wine they fed him three mouthfuls of their leaf-wrapped fish. It was sour-tasting and sharp, but he ate it eagerly, and the Flikkermen laughed: 'Shplegmun.'
A short time later he noticed that his captors were watching the shore. Lifting his head Pazel saw a pack of ghost-gray dogs racing through the underbrush, studying them with eyes that glowed red as coals. Sulphur dogs. It was said that when they killed, they ate the flesh warm and chewed the bones to daybreak, grinding them to meal. How they communicated no one knew, for they never barked or howled. For a long time Pazel lay watching the pack run in silence, keeping pace with the boats.
The next three days were much like the first-sleep by daylight, in some hollow or thicket or marsh; swift travel by night. But Pazel felt a queasy ache in the pit of his stomach. It grew hour by hour, and by the third day he was shaking and chilled.
'What's wrong with him?' the Flikkermen asked one another.
'Fever,' Pazel told them, 'I've got chills and a fever.'
'Babbling. Delirious.' They shook their heads.
'That fish would make a wharf-rat sick. Don't you have anything else?'
They wondered aloud what tongue he was speaking. And Pazel bit his lips with rage, for he thought they were teasing him. Your tongue, you ugly louts! Only much later did he realize that they were right: he was delirious, and speaking Ormali, and he wondered if he might be starting to die.
Time became even more fragmented: one moment it was a hot, fly-plagued afternoon, the next a damp and chilly midnight. Through all the pain, cold sweats and dizzy spells, Pazel suffered most in his mind. Questions preyed on him like vultures, one ravenous bird after another dropping out of the sky to peck at his brain. Was Hercуl alive? Who had attacked him, and who had killed that Zirfet fellow? Had the ixchel realized that Thasha knew of their presence on the Chathrand, and slit her throat? What would the Flikkers do if he was too weak to sell?
Clammy palms swept flies from his face. Wet cloths were pressed against his forehead, and something astringent rubbed on his chest. He was lifted in and out of boats. Warm broth was spooned into his mouth; plain water replaced the wine. Days and nights were like the violent banging of a cottage door in the wind: lamplight, darkness, lamplight again.
Then a dawn came when Pazel realized with a jolt that his illness was gone. He was thinner and weaker, but his head was so clear it was like a stiff sea-breeze driving away the clouds, revealing a cool, clean starlit night.
He was in a larger boat, with a roofed cabin. He was unbound and undressed, but wrapped in a blanket tucked snugly beneath his feet. A Flikker woman was crouching by a wood-burning stove, stirring a pot of stew and singing: Poor little field mice, lost in a storm, only a wildcat to keep them warm.
She was very old. Her green-brown skin was dry and wrinkled, and the joints in her great hands were swollen and stiff. She glanced at him and gave a satisfied croak.
'Awake!' she said, in the Flikkers' old-fashioned Arquali. 'I knew thy heart was strong. Art thou improved, boy?'
'I'm much better,' said Pazel, in her own tongue.
The old woman lit up like a firecracker, and dropped her wooden spoon. 'You speak Flikker!' she cried.
'Where am I, please?' asked Pazel.
She recovered her spoon, hobbled forward and whacked him smartly with it across the cheek. 'Feel that?'
'Why, yes,' said Pazel, holding his cheek.
'Praise the blood of the earth! A few days ago your skin was numb-numb and cold, like a drowned man's. But look at you now! You're going to live, strange human boy.'
Pazel saw his tattered clothes folded on a corner of her low wooden table. Scattered over the rest of the table, to his astonishment, were books. They were soiled, fourth-hand volumes, spines cracked and resewn, pages hanging in tatters. Nearly all were medical in nature; indeed the first book his eyes lighted upon was Parasites: An Appreciation by Dr. Ignus Chadfallow.
'You've been caring for me, haven't you?' he said.
'Right you are,' said the old woman. 'Thirteen days.'
'Thirteen!'
With a kindly smile (an expression Pazel had not imagined possible on a Flikker face) she helped him out of
