the mer could not endure.” To his frown she replied, “I cannot go far from the water. I have to return to the wet frequently. Please. Tell your story.”
Little splashes behind Februaren told him he had an audience broader than a single shape-changed girl.
He told ninety percent of the truth. And no deliberate lies.
The girl said, “We are after the same thing. The opening of the way. Otherwise, we all die. And the world of men will follow. Unless…”
“Yes? Unless?”
“We are at the mercy of the Aelen Kofer. Only the Aelen Kofer can open the way. Only the Aelen Kofer have the skills to rebuild the rainbow bridge. Only the Aelen Kofer can save the Tba Mer. And…”
The girl wanted him to ask. “And?”
“Only you can go where the Aelen Kofer have gone. Only you have legs to survive the dry journey. Only your human lips can shape the magical word that will compel the Aelen Kofer to hear your appeal.”
“Magic word? What magic word?” A swift riffle through his recollections of north myth exhumed nothing. “Rumplestiltskin?”
“No! Invoke the name of the one whose name we dare not speak. The one you named in your tale.”
“All right.” He would have to think about that. It must be Ordnan, whose name was not to be spoken though everyone knew it somehow. But the Gray Walker was gone. Named or unnamed, he had no power anymore. How could an extinct god compel the Aelen Kofer? “But I can’t make any journey if I’m sealed up inside here.”
“Only the middle world, your world and mine, is denied us. The Aelen Kofer went down into their own realm.”
“Down? I thought they sailed away aboard the golden barge of the gods.”
“No. The barge is right behind you. You were on it. It is involved, but the dwarves went down. Back to the world whence the Old Ones summoned them in the great dawn of their power. Back when they were the New Gods and the Golden Ones.”
The girl stopped talking. The old man was pleased. He had time to do more than labor after what she was trying to say.
She was patient. As were the mer in the water behind Februaren.
“I don’t know the stories of this world as good as I should. How does one move from this world to that of the dwarves?”
The answer was absurd on its face. And explained why someone might think the Aelen Kofer had gone away on a barge.
His acquaintance with religion suggested that most were founded on logical absurdities easily discerned from outside. And yet, each was true, courtesy of the Night. Somewhere. At some time. At least part of the time.
A dozen Instrumentalities of the grand, bizarre old sort had shown their resurrected selves of late. He had come here seeking help dealing with the worst of the breed.
He could almost feel the bitter cold breath of the Windwalker.
Absurd. But real. Februaren boarded the rotting ship again. Gingerly, afraid the decay might be so advanced that ladders would collapse under his negligible weight. But time had not advanced to meet his dread.
The ship was not large. It was low in the waist, rising only a few feet higher than the quay. Februaren doubted that it drew a dozen feet heavily loaded. The main weather deck was six feet above the waterline. The tub was short and wide and indifferent, like one of his earliest wives. It did not resent his presence enough to react. Magic ship or not.
This ship was not the same size inside as out. Which was no stunner to the Ninth Unknown. Space needed only to conform to the Will of the Night.
The only deck below the main weather deck was the bottom of the cargo hold, loose planking on cross frame members, concealing the ballast voids, bilges, and keel. Half the ship was nothing but a big, empty box that stank because it had not been pumped clean in far too long.
The hold could be examined from above simply by moving a hatch cover. It appeared to be accessible- safely-only through the bows or stern castle. Februaren had instructions to go down. The mer had told him to use the stern route, past the master’s cabin.
The master’s quarters were on the main deck level, behind a pathetic galley. Februaren ransacked that, found nothing more useful than several rusty knives and an ebony marlinspike that had to be a memento. It was too heavy to be a practical tool.
Done there, Februaren descended a steep stairs. Seamen would call it a ladder. The deck below constituted quarters for two or three officers, so low even a short man had to bend to get around. How much worse for the seamen up forward? Had they even had room to sling hammocks?
Had there, in fact, ever been an actual crew? Did the gods need one?
Light leaked in from above and through skinny gaps in the hull. It revealed little of interest. A fine deposit of dust. Webs whose spiders had been hunted out long ago by rats and mice who had since abandoned ship.
He had been told to keep going down. He descended to another cramped deck where food and ship’s stores might have been kept. Then down again, and again. Counting steps, he was fifteen feet below the ship’s bottom when he ran out of ladders. There was no less light here than there had been up above. The tired old light leaked in, around, and through cracks in a crude plank door. Which, in theory, ought to open on the cargo bay but could not possibly because it had to be beneath the bottom of the harbor.
The rotten latchstring broke when he pulled it. Why had it been left out? Had someone been left behind? Or did it just not matter?
He slipped the blade of the thinnest knife through a crack and lifted the latch. Which proved to be a wooden strip so slight it would have broken if he had just pushed the door hard.
“Hatch,” he reminded himself as he eased through, cautiously. Sailors called their doors hatches.
What lay beyond the hatchway was no ship’s hold. It was a mountain meadow in summer, without the direct sunshine. Lightly wooded hills rose to either hand. Mountains more fierce than the Jagos loomed beyond, all around. Mountains all dark indigo gray, most with white on the tips of their teeth.
Cloven Februaren stopped halfway through the hatchway, saw what was to be seen, withdrew. He swung the rickety door open as far as it would go, used one of the plundered knives to jam it so it could not swing shut. He collected a loose plank from those covering the bilges, laid it down so a quarter of its length protruded into the world of the dwarves. Only then did he step on through.
He removed his pack, extracted his spare shirt, fixed it to the plank end by hammering in another liberated knife. The shirt hung there like what it was, a rumpled, dirty yellow rag. Attached to a board protruding from a blot of darkness the eye could not fix and could not have found again without knowing the correct magic-had he allowed the hatch to close.
He found nothing better than a few stones so tossed those through to strengthen the connection between worlds. Then he walked slowly uphill toward a standing stone on sentry duty a hundred yards away.
With each step a little of the gray around him went away. A wash of pale color entered the world. It waxed but never became homeworld strong. It was a pastel world when the old man stopped in front of the standing stone.
The menhir was covered with dwarfish runes. The gods had borrowed them, then gave them to the children of men so they could record their prayers. Cloven Februaren stared at three runes inked onto his left palm, then found a matching sequence on the face of the stone. He traced each of the three with his right forefinger as he spoke the names of the runes. He was careful with his pronunciations.
The air shimmered. It shuddered and pushed against the Ninth Unknown. It twisted. Then the space between him and the stone filled with an old, hairy, bewildered Aelen Kofer who rubbed his eyes and squinted, rubbed his eyes and squinted. He did not want to believe what he saw.
Februaren said, “The Aelen Kofer are required.” He used the tongue he shared with the mer. He had been assured that the dwarves would understand.
If his recollections of the mythology were correct, the Aelen Kofer would understand him whatever tongue he used.
The dwarf gulped air behind his beard. Doubtless, that had sprouted before the first men turned sticks into tools. He rasped, “Son of Man!” and made it sound like the worst swearing he could imagine.
