‘I don’t know. There isn’t any reason that anyone should care about me one way or the other. Except that I keep having this feeling that I’m being watched. Or followed.’
‘A feeling many of us might share. Well, though it might be better for each of us if we were other people, still we are only Jaer and Medlo. Two travellers in orbansin going where it is that travellers go. Shortly, at the fullness of the tide, I take ship for Hynath Town. If you cannot pay passage, I will lend it to you in return for your company – and your labour at the jangle in weeks to come.’
Jaer flushed once more, staring at his boots. He was still fearful, not trusting this man nor any other, and yet-what else offered better? Ephraim had often said that of the brooding upon conjecture there is no end, nor of the construction of false hypotheses. He might as well stop guessing and risk something. He would not, however, tell this foxish man that he carried enough gold for one hundred passages from Candor. Instead, ‘If you will buy my passage, I will be your fellow musician.’ He added to himself silently. ‘And save my gold for emergencies.’
The evening watch was called through the streets as they walked to the wharf to board the fat-bellied ship which waited the tide. The ship wallowed out of harbour, and Jaer watched Candor dwindle behind him as he tried to decide whether the motion made him sick enough to lose his dinner.
Jaer woke in the dark on the fourth night of the voyage oppressed by dreams and a feeling of heaviness which he could not identify. He could not get back to sleep, and the morning and day went by with him hunched against the rail, half-hypnotized by the sparkle of water and not thinking of anything. Medlo insisted that they spend some time in practice, but Jaer’s mind was not on it and Medlo finally gave it up to go play card games with the crew. Evening came, the feeling of apprehension grew heavier, and Jaer wrapped himself in his orbansa, refusing food, to fall into an early, restless sleep.
He was swimming in a wide wilderness without horizons in the company of fish-tailed men and women through translucent shadows over watery depths. From a distance without direction a huge voice tried to tell him something important, but she could not understand what it was. The voice kept urging her to answer, but she could not – or would not – speak that language. Then the huge voice faded into an approaching silence. Something had not been answered, so was coming to see for itself… and behind it came something else, a threat, a wave of grey force which tumbled out of remoteness toward her. She woke, crying out, to find Medlo shaking her.
‘It’s coming at us,’ she cried. ‘Medlo, make them turn the ship away. There’s something coming at us, and something terrible following.’
Medlo gave her a strange, wildly questioning look as he leapt from the deck to speak persuasively to the helmsman. The ship swung slowly away to the right, away from the previous line of movement.
The night was still, the wind steady from the southeast. Overhead the stars rocked silently in and out of the rigging. Jaer stood at the rail, peering to the left, to the line they had left, seeing the great form lunge up into the moonlight, dripping horns gleaming against the sky, white wake streaming behind the lashing tail which swept it on and away toward Candor. Behind that great form was something unseen, only felt, a harshness against the skin, a metallic acridity beneath the tongue. Jaer caught her breath, feeling Medlo’s arm around her shoulders and hearing the helmsman’s gasp. Away behind them the dark form faded into distance, and the metallic taste was replaced by a kind of sickness. She leaned over the rail, gagging.
Medlo said in a deceptively calm voice, ‘Do you do that often?’
‘I could feel it in my dream,’ said Jaer. Her tongue felt coated with fabric. ‘Searching for me.’
‘Something more than a dream, wasn’t it?’ Medlo ran his hands across her body, touching her here and there in quick, patted questions. ‘Should I ask what you have done with Jaer?’
‘No. That is, no. Nothing.’
‘Nothing. I see. A bit of shape and sex shifting. A small change of persons. I would say you are slightly shorter, a little rounder in places. The voice, of course, was the giveaway.’
‘I suppose it was. I hoped we would get to shore before it happened.’
‘Ah. So it’s not a new thing. And your sea monster friend? Is that a new thing?’
‘I’ve never seen anything like it before.’
‘Remarkably like the thing the sailors were discussing. The thing the Keepers say does not exist.’
‘I’ve been told that the Keepers say what it suits them to say.’
‘Not a view which should be loudly expressed.’
‘I know. What are you going to do with me?’
Medlo laughed, shortly, tangled his fingers in his short beard and stared at the sky. ‘I’m going to sit down with you very quietly and let you tell me about you, and how, and when, and why….’
‘I can’t.’
‘You can try,’ he said firmly.
Dawn found her still trying. Medlo found it easier to accept the strangeness of Jaer-male, Jaer-female than he did the idea that he/she was determined to travel eastward without any idea of the dangers, the terrain, or what such creatures as the sea monster signified. She had said six times, the last several in increasing irritation and weariness, that she had taken oath to continue Ephraim and Nathan’s quest. Medlo would not understand.
He picked up the quest book which she had offered in part explanation and read from it, in a sneering tone.
‘Downward the fabled postern stands
.
Three chainbound captives are set free
.
The Queen of Beasts wanders the lands
between Gerenhodh and the sea
.
‘From shadows the black warrior comes
,
basiliskos his battle flag
.
A singer beats
