Empire could fail to recognize Narybir, even if, like Bolutu, he had never come near it.
But once ashore they had found the tower abandoned, its doors barred and padlocked, its great stair plunged beneath a drift of sand. A few minutes later they had met the dlomu villagers: coal-black figures like Mr. Bolutu, skin slick as eels, fingers webbed to the first knuckle, hair of a metallic sheen and those hypnotic eyes in which it was difficult to spot the pupil. Ten or twelve families in all: refugees, gaunt and fearful, hiding from the war. By day they scanned the gulf for danger, tended their meager gardens, snared birds and rodents in the stunted forest of the cape. By night they huddled in the old stone houses, plugging holes against the wind.
Sergeant Haddismal was shouting: “-ask us to believe that? I don’t believe it! And why not? Because it’s monstrous and impossible. You’re trying to play us for fools.”
“Rubbish, Sergeant!” said Fiffengurt, shouting rapidly and with unnatural excitement. “There’s no bad faith here. A mistake is what it is. Humankind wiped out? It doesn’t square. We saw a group of men just yesterday, soon as we landed.”
“But we saw them up close,” said Pazel. “Hercol and Thasha and I, and Bolutu as well. It’s true, Mr. Fiffengurt. They’re… animals.”
“They are tol-chenni,” said Ibjen.
“Come come.” said Fiffengurt. “Yesterday a whole devilish armada passed by in the gulf-you can’t have forgotten that, Mr. Hercol.”
“I fear I never shall,” said Hercol.
“Right,” said Haddismal, turning on Ibjen. “We’re done playin’ this little game. Or are you going to tell us those ships were crewed by your kind alone-dlomu to the lowliest swab? That there were no humans aboard?”
Ibjen was at a loss. “In cages, you mean?”
“Gentlemen!” said Fiffengurt. “This is a mix-up, I tell you. A tiz-woz, a garble-box, you follow, Ibjen my lad? Maybe you don’t. Or maybe I’m still not following you. Don’t take it unkindly, but you’re not exactly speaking proper Arquali. Your words start all wrong. Puh is puh and buh is buh, and they ain’t the same thing-”
“He is not speaking Arquali at all,” said Bolutu. “I told you yesterday, Fiffengurt: your tongue is an offshoot of our Imperial Common. You Northerners are the children of Bali Adro emigrants, whether you like it or not.”
“Well then!” said the quartermaster, pouncing. “If humans from your Belly-whatsit Empire crossed the Ruling Sea and founded our own, they couldn’t very well have been animals, now could they?”
“That was before-many centuries before the change.”
“No, no, no!” shouted Fiffengurt. “Hush, listen! I’ve sailed more than any of you; I know how strange tribal folk can seem-why, some of them brutes back in the Jitril Isles-”
Thasha sank her hands into her golden hair and pulled, pulled, until she felt the roots close to tearing, until she knew for certain the pain was real. They wouldn’t believe even this much. How could they possibly face the rest? How was she going to face it?
The first part, what had become of human beings: she might still have been denying that, if she hadn’t seen them yesterday, in the little square at the village center. But oh, how she’d seen them. Slack-jawed, fly-mobbed, stinking. Half the women pregnant. The men with coarse, matted beards. Out they had come at the old dlomu’s call, shuffling, whimpering, and then Something had happened to Thasha then. Something frightful and very personal, like those nightmares that erupt in silence and last just an instant, waking one with an urge to scream. But Thasha could not for the life of her say what it had been. She had not fainted. Several minutes were simply gone.
When memory returned, no one was standing quite where they had been. Hercol was blocking the gate that let onto the square, forbidding entry to the rest of the landing party. Mr. Bolutu was staring at his hands. Pazel was beside her, pressing a cup of water to her lips, the first long drink she’d had in a fortnight and the most delicious in her life. Pazel told her she’d suffered an attack. He spoke with tenderness, but his eyes betrayed another feeling: for a moment, before he checked himself, they had blazed with accusation.
She had seen Pazel angry, furious, fighting for his life. But she had never seen him turn anyone that sort of look. What could she possibly have done to deserve it?
A distant boom wrenched her back to the present. The serpent had risen again, this time across the inlet beside one of the rocky isles, and with a thundering roar smashed its jaw against the cliff. An echo of steel on stone rolled across the inlet; from the island birds rose in clouds. Again the monster struck, and again.
It was trying to break free of its bridle, the remains of some entangling war-tack. She winced; even from here she could see the fresh blood, scarlet over turquoise. Great shelvings of stone collapsed into the waves; miles away the Chathrand was rocking like a hobby horse. Pain, she thought. Pain and death and madness, and enough fresh water to keep us alive. That was all they had found so far in this new world, this great South they’d reached after months without landfall, half of it in storm, a passage through lunacy in its own right, a nightmare. Hercol was right: the truth might trigger almost any sort of panic once it reached the ship.
They collected driftwood and desiccated grass. Pazel and Fiffengurt, with much swearing and arguing and rasping of twigs, coaxed the brush into flames just minutes before it grew too dark to see. There was plenty to burn: the weather, as they knew too well, had been mercilessly dry.
Hercol had gone away into the dunes “to be sure they were quite alone.” Thasha went on collecting firewood until the light failed altogether, now and then glancing across the water at the Chathrand. They had waved to the Great Ship from the mouth of the inlet, and received a signal in return: Are you safe till morning? A reasonable if disappointing question. The serpent might be gone (it had slipped the bridle at last, flung it high as the tip of Narybir Tower, and shot away into the Ruling Sea) but what else might be lurking in this alien gulf? No, there was no justifying a rescue by night. They had answered in the affirmative and trudged back resentfully to the beach where they’d swum ashore.
In the darkness a small miracle occurred. The beach was etched with faint, zigzag ribbons of light. Scarlet, emerald, shimmering blue: each line no thicker than a shoelace, and fading even as they stared. Thasha walked down to the water, entranced. It was the surf lines that were glowing. Each charge of foam reached its highest point, and there disgorged a boiling mass of shelled creatures, smaller than termites, which somehow gripped the sand and began to glow. For a few wild seconds they crawled and squirmed. Were they spawning, seeking mates? Thasha found she could not touch them: at the approach of her hand their light vanished without a trace.
It grew cold. The men were still embarrassed, but they could hardly deny Thasha a spot by the fire. They held bunches of dried grass against their loins: grass that crackled and poked them and blew about in the wind, and the more the wind blew the closer to the fire they edged, until Thasha feared that someone would go up in flames. Only the dlomu, dignified by their trousers, sat calmly, warming their webbed hands. Pazel was as foolish as anyone, hiding behind the marines.
Thasha found them ridiculous. Hours ago they’d been told that their race was dead or dying across the entire Southern world. What were they thinking, how could they care? And yet she herself was glad to be covered. They made for something normal, these motions of modesty. Something that had yet to collapse.
Hercol reappeared, startling them, for none had heard his approach. “I have walked along the north beach,” he said, kneeling, “and I found the memorial: it was not in the dunes at all, but on a black rock facing the Ruling Sea. That is what we were looking for, Sergeant: a war memorial, one we hoped might tell us something about the catastrophe. Alas, I could not read a word of the inscription.”
“We shouldn’t have come!” blurted Ibjen suddenly. “We told you: even if you could find the memorial, and read it, you’d learn no more from it than you would from us. Is that truly why we crossed the inlet? Is that why we almost died?”
“Yes,” said Hercol.
Overwhelmed, Ibjen turned away and bit his lips.
Haddismal laughed. “What you means is, I shouldn’t have come. What are you doing with us anyway, boy? Your old dad punishing you for something?”
Ibjen looked down at his hands. “I was told there were great ones among you,” he said, “trying to do something fine.”
“Fine?”
“Something to redeem the world.”
“Who told you that?” asked Thasha. “Who could possibly have told you that?”
But Ibjen just shook his head. “We shouldn’t be here, Thashiziq. We explained everything back in the village.”
