first.'
Kestrel took his eyes from the ship to port gradually drawing closer. There seemed little doubt that they had been seen. He looked to starboard and shook his head in amazement. Near the stern was another tall mast, and directly abeam was a third. There was such a thing as luck, but this was incredible. How could they have been placed in the precise center of a circle of ships in a totally featureless sea?
Kestrel looked at Phoebe, but she did not seem to care about the coincidence. She was jumping up and down as much as he. The boat rocked with each leap, and Nimbia stumbled as she tried to maintain her balance. Astron reached out and grabbed her awkwardly by the shoulder. Kestrel saw the demon's nose suddenly wrinkle with the contact. The eye membranes flicked into place, and he quickly withdrew. Nimbia smiled and reached out in return, grabbing Astron's retreating hand.
Astron held his arm out stiffly like a stick figure drawn by a child. Nimbia steadied herself and closed the distance between them.
'The retriever of harebell pollen, the swordsman leader of the rotators, and even the gentleman-in-waiting for a queen of the fey,' she said. 'One has difficulty remembering that you are a merely a djinn from beyond the flame.'
The crook in Astron's nose sharpened. 'I am a demon, you know full well,' he said slowly. 'But the power of my brood brethren is not mine to command. I am but a cataloguer, serving as best I can.'
'And to whom is it that this service is rendered?'
'Why, to my prince, of course,' Astron said. He paused and looked away from Nimbia's gaze. 'And, of course, to the success of the quest of Kestrel, Phoebe, and-and Nimbia as well.'
'And when the quest is over?'
'I have not thought of it,' Astron said. 'It is not the nature of demonkind to think of what lies beyond the present. It leads to brooding on the inevitability of the jaded senses and the ultimate despair of the great monotony.'
'But as I have observed, you are no common demon,' Nimbia said. 'And for me, the end of the quest poses the greatest uncertainty for us four. The two humans will no doubt return to their own kind.' She waved her arm in Kestrel's direction. 'And you, if you so choose, will flitter back to some depressingly plain patch of mud in the void of your realm. But what of Nimbia, a queen of the fey? There is no place to which to return. Ever so much worse than before, there is no one with whom to share. Who will serve me with distinction in a manner of which I could be proud?'
Astron wrenched his hand free of Nimbia's grip. 'Your words prick at my stembrain,' he said. 'It is difficult to maintain rational control.' For a long moment he stood silent; then his membranes cleared and the muscles in his face relaxed. He looked at Nimbia and spoke softly. 'Do not be deceived,' he said. 'I am no weaver of matter; no wings of great lift sprout from my back. I am only a cataloguer whose power derives from the few facts that no other has learned. There is no special destiny for one such as I.'
'In the realm of the fey and, I suspect in others as well, one is measured by his deeds, rather than his inherent potentials, whatever they might be. I remember tasting your inner doubts when you rescued me from Prydwin's sentrymen, demon. And I have seen you lead hundreds of rotators with clumsy hands and little regard for your own safety as well.' Nimbia reached out and touched Astron gently on the cheek. 'There is much more that you can learn, cataloguer,' she said, 'much more you can learn of yourself.'
'Avast, you in the dory,' a deep voice suddenly boomed across the waves. 'Reduce your efflux so that the others will sail away.'
Kestrel turned his attention from Astron and Nimbia and looked over at the ship approaching from portside. It was nearer than the others, and details of its superstructure could now be discerned. A single short mast stood in the middle of a deck that was both wide and long. A lateen sail billowed in a stiffening breeze that had not been there before the arrival of the vessel it propelled. The broad bow and even broader beam were wider than those of any barge that Kestrel had ever seen. It seemed hard to believe that the small area of cloth presented to the wind could be adequate for a hull easily the length of two score men.
Even more remarkable. Kestrel thought with a start, was the fact that he understood perfectly the words that had been spoken. Except for a slight accent, they sounded like the speech of an Arcadian from across the sea in the realm of men. This, then, was not another creation of Prydwin; but if not, how amazing that the language turned out as it did.
'Reduce your efflux,' the voice repeated. 'You have impressed me as much as you will. I regard you as wealthy. To spill more luck to the winds will up my assessment not a quantum more.'
Kestrel looked up at the deck, puzzled. He saw a rotund man wrapped in pinkish silks and a purple sash pulled tight into an overflowing girth. Bushy black hair, as dark as night, tumbled out of a small turban down the sides of his face into a curly beard. The deep-set eyes squinted cruelly into the reddish sun. The smile wrinkles looked shallow and seldom used.
Three or four others dressed like the first huddled about their leader, each one holding high a small cage of gold that contained some small white-furred rodent contentedly munching away on greens. The neck of each man was bowed under the weight of at least a score of chains. On every chain hung small trinkets; some were mere gauze bags tied with ribbon, others intricately veined leaves pressed flat on slabs of slate.
'Why, you carry no plenuma,' the black-headed one continued as the two vessels drew quite close, 'no plenum chambers at all.' He reached for a monocle of colored glass hanging from a chain about his own neck and quickly cocked it into his eye. 'By the rush of entropy, it is in spontaneous discharge from all four of you-spontaneous discharge, as if you had been building pressure for a lifetime and using none of it until now.'
He waved over his shoulder to the center of the ship. 'All right, I withdraw my words. I am most certainly impressed, more certainly than I have ever been before.' He paused and intertwined his fingers across his expansive girth, rocking back and forth silently as if enjoying a secret joke. 'But mark you,' he said after a moment, 'I am not so awed as to forgo absorbing the flux for myself. And if you do not have plenum chambers, let us find out how good are your wards against the sucking chambers of Jelilac, the most fortunate.'
A man much smaller than Jelilac suddenly vaulted over the gunwale of the larger ship and, with hardly a glance to see where he was going, landed firmly in the dory between Phoebe and Nimbia. He carried what looked like a bowl of soapy water in one hand and a large pipe in the other. Without spilling a drop or hesitating to catch his balance, he adroitly settled into a squatting position and submerged the pipe into the bowl.
Kestrel noticed that he had as many chains about his neck as the rest, perhaps even more. All along the arms and legs of his silken tunic were embroidered tiny leaves of clover, and each of his fingers was wrapped in bows of red ribbon.
'Luck begets luck.' The newcomer noticed Kestrel's stare. 'It is the third tenet.' Then, without further comment, he began to blow on his pipe, causing a bubble to form in its bowl. His first few puffs on the pipe seemed easy, and the glassy surface expanded with rapid jumps. But when the bubble had reached the size of a fist, Kestrel noticed that the veins in the pipeman's neck began to stand out and his cheeks redden from the effort to force air down the stem of the pipe. It reminded him of the sport of the fey, but it was somehow different, and he suspected the effort served a practical utility.
As Kestrel watched, the surface of the bubble began to darken and take on what looked like a tough, leathery texture, far less elastic than any balloon. By the time the pipeman had finished, he had created a sphere perhaps the size of a person's head with a dark opalescent surface that light just barely shone through.
The piper dropped his grip on the pipestem. With a grunt, he removed the bubble from where it still adhered to the bowl. Then he quickly stretched out his arms and touched the orb to the hem of Phoebe's cape. There was a sudden spark of light that jumped from the draping material into the interior of the sphere. For an instant Kestrel saw what looked like a churning maelstrom of dense red smoke within the confines of the globe; but as the light vanished, the image faded away.
Phoebe immediately stumbled. Kestrel reached out just in time to break her fall on the hard planking of the small boat. 'Just exactly what do you think you are doing,' he shouted angrily at the piper. 'What is that thing, anyway?'
The piper looked at Phoebe's sprawled form on the deck and then hefted the sphere at his side. 'I suppose it does seem a bit uncivil,' he said. 'Certainly for this exchange, you deserve at least the most basic of talismans in return.' He reached into his pocket with his free hand and offered Phoebe a necklace like one of the many he wore about his neck. What looked like the preserved foot of a small animal dangled from the lower end.
