THE JEWELS OF APTOR, by Samuel R. Delany (Part 1)

The waves flung up against the purple glow

of double sleeplessness. Along the piers

the ships return; but sailing I would go

through double rings of fire, double fears.

So therefore let your bright vaults heave the night

about with ropes of wind and points of light,

and say, as all the rolling stars go, “I

have stood my feet on rock and seen the sky.”

—These are the opening lines from The Galactica, by the one-armed poet Geo, the epic of the conflicts of Leptar and Aptor.

PROLOGUE

Afterwards, she was taken down to the sea.

She didn’t feel too well, so she sat on a rock down where the sand was wet and scrunched her bare toes in and out of the cool surface.

She turned away, looked toward the water, and hunched her shoulders a little. “I think it was awful,” she said. “I think it was pretty terrible. Why did you show it to me? He was just a little boy. What reason could they have possibly had for doing that to him?”

“It was just a film,” he said. “We showed it to you so you would learn.”

“But it was a film of something that really happened.”

“It happened several years ago, several hundred miles away.”

“But it did happen; you used a tight beam to spy on them, and when the image came in on the vision screen, you made a film of it, and—But why did you show it to me?”

“What have we been teaching you?”

But she couldn’t think, and only had the picture in her mind, vivid movements, scarlets, and bright agony. “He was just a child,” she said. “He couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve.”

“You are just a child,” he said. “You are not sixteen yet.”

“What was I supposed to learn?”

“Look around you,” he said. “You should see something.”

But the picture in her mind was still too vivid, too bright.

“You should be able to learn it right here on this beach, in the trees back there, in the rocks, in the bleached shells around your feet. You do see it; you just don’t recognize it.” Suddenly he changed his tone. “Actually you’re a very fine student. You learn quickly. Do you remember anything about telepathy? You studied it months ago.”

“‘By a method similar to radio broadcast and reception,’” she recited, “‘the synapse patterns of conscious thoughts are read from one cranial cortex and duplicated in another, resulting in similar sensual impressions experienced—’” Suddenly she broke off. “But I can’t do it, so it doesn’t help me any!”

“What about history, then?” he said. “You did extremely well during the examination. What good does knowing about all the happenings in the world before and after the Great Fire do you?”

“Well, it’s…” she started. “It’s just interesting.”

“The film you saw,” he said, “was, in a way, history. That is, it happened in the past.”

“But it was so—” Again she stopped. “—horrible!”

“Does history fascinate you because it’s just interesting?” he asked. “Or does it do something else? Don’t you ever want to know what the reason is behind some of the things these people do in the pages of the books?”

“Yes, I want to know the reasons,” she said. “Like I want to know the reason they nailed that man to the oaken cross. I want to know why they did that to him.”

“A good question,” he mused. “Which reminds me, at about the same time as they were nailing him to that cross, it was decided in China that the forces of the universe were to be represented by a circle, half black, half white. But to remind themselves that there was no pure force, no purely unique reason, they put a spot of white paint in the black half and a spot of black paint in the white. Isn’t that interesting?”

She looked at him and wondered how he had gotten from one to the other. But he was going on.

“And do you remember the goldsmith, the lover, how he recorded in his autobiography that at age four, he and his father saw the Fabulous Salamander on their hearth by the fire; and his father suddenly smacked the boy ten feet across the room into a rack of kettles, saying something to the effect that little Cellini was too young to remember the incident unless some pain accompanied it.”

“I remember that story,” she said. “And I remember that Cellini said that he wasn’t sure if the smack was the reason he remembered the Salamander, or the Salamander the reason he remembered the smack.”

“Yes, yes!” he cried. “That’s it. The reason, the reasons… Don’t you see the pattern?”

“Only I don’t know what a Salamander is,” she told him.

“Well, it’s like the blue lizards that sing outside your window sometimes,” he explained. “Only it isn’t blue, and it doesn’t sing.”

“Then why should anyone want to remember it?” she grinned. It was an attempt to annoy him, but he was not looking at her, and was talking of something else.

“And the painter,” he was saying, “he was a friend of Cellini, you remember, in Florence. He was painting a picture of “La Gioconda.” As a matter of fact, he had to take time from the already crumbling picture of “The Last Supper” of the man who was nailed to the cross of oak to paint her. And he put a smile on her face of which men asked for centuries, ‘What is the reason she smiles so strangely?’ Yes, the reason, don’t you see? Just look around.”

“What about the Great Fire?” she asked. “When they dropped flames from the skies and the harbors boiled, that was reasonless. That was like what they did to that boy.”

“Oh no,” he said to her. “Not reasonless. True, when the Great Fire came, people all over the earth screamed, ‘Why? Why? How can man do this to man? What is the reason?’ But just look around you, right here. On this beach.”

“I guess I can’t see it yet,” she said. “I can just see what they did to him, and it was awful.”

“Well,” said the man in the dark robe, “perhaps when you stop seeing what they did so vividly, you will start seeing why they did it. I think it’s time for us to go back now.”

As she slid off the rock and started walking beside him, barefooted in the sand, she asked, “That boy—I wasn’t sure, he was all tied up, but he had four arms, didn’t he?”

“He did.”

“You know, I can’t just go around saying it was awful. I think I’m going to write a poem. Or make something. Or both. I’ve got to get it out of my head.”

“That wouldn’t be a bad idea,” he mumbled as they approached the trees in front of the river. “Not at all.”

And several days later, and several hundred miles away…

CHAPTER I

Waves flung themselves at the blue evening. Low light burned on the wet hulks of ships that slipped by mossy pilings into the docks as water sloshed at the rotten stone embankment of the city.

Gangplanks, chained from wooden pullies, scraped into place on concrete blocks, and the crew, after the slow captain and the tall mate, descended raffishly along the wooden boards which sagged with the pounding of bare feet. In bawling groups, pairs, or singly they howled into the narrow waterfront streets, into the yellow light from open inn doors, the purple shadowed portals leading to dim rooms full of blue smoke and stench of burnt poppies.

The captain, with eyes the color of sea under fog, touched his sword hilt with his fist and said quietly to the mate, “Well, they’re gone. We better start collecting new sailors for the ten we lost at Aptor. Ten good men, Jordde. I’m sick when I think of the bone and broken meat they became.”

“Ten for the dead,” sneered the mate, “and twenty for the living we’ll never see again. Any sailor that would want to continue this trip with us is insane. We’ll do well if we only lose that many.” He was a tall, wire bound man, which made the green tunic he wore look baggy.

“I’ll never forgive her for ordering us to that monstrous island,” said the captain.

“I wouldn’t speak too loudly,” mumbled the mate. “Yours isn’t to forgive her. Besides, she went with them, and was in as much danger as they were. It’s only luck she came back.”

Suddenly the captain asked, “Do you believe the sailor’s stories of magic they tell of her?”

“Why, sir?” asked the mate. “Do you?”

“No, I don’t,” said the captain with a certainty that came too quickly. “Still, with three survivors out of thirteen, that she should be among them, with hardly a robe torn.”

“Perhaps they wouldn’t touch a woman,” suggested the mate, Jordde.

“Perhaps,” said the captain.

“And she’s been strange,” continued Jordde, “ever since then. She walks at night. I’ve seen her going by the rails, looking from the sea-fire to the stars, and then back.”

“Ten good men,” mused the captain. “Hacked up, torn in bits. I wouldn’t have believed that much barbarity in the world, if I hadn’t seen that arm, floating on the water. It gives me chills now, the way the men ran to the rail to see, pointed at it. And it just raised itself up, like a beckoning, a signal, and then sank in a wash of foam and green water.”

“Well,” said the mate, “we have men to get.”

“I wonder if she’ll come ashore?”

“She’ll come if she wants, Captain. Her doing is no concern of yours. Your job is the ship and to do what she says.”

“I have more of a job than that,” and he looked back at his still craft.

The mate touched the captain’s shoulder. “If you’re going to speak things like that, speak them softly, and only to me.”

“I have more of a job than that,” the captain repeated. Then, suddenly, he started away, and the mate was following him down the darkening dockside street.

* * * *

The dock was still for a moment. Then a barrel toppled from a pile of barrels, and a figure moved like a bird’s shadow across the opening between mounds of cargo set about the pier.

At the same time two men approached down a narrow street filled with the day’s last light. The bigger one threw a great shadow that aped his gesticulating arms behind him on the greenish faces of the buildings. Bare feet like halved hams, shins bound with thongs and pelts, he waved one hand in explanation, while he rubbed the back of the other on his short, mahogany beard.

“You’re going to ship out, eh friend? You think they’ll take your rhymes and jingles instead of muscles and rope pulling?”

The smaller, in a white tunic looped with a thick leather belt, laughed beneath his friend’s rantings. “Fifteen minutes ago you thought it was a fine idea; said it would make me a man.”

“Oh, it’s a life to make,” his hand went up, “and it’s a life to break men,” and it fell.

The slighter one pushed back black hair from his forehead, stopped, and looked at the ships. “You still haven’t told me why no ship has taken you on in the past three months,” he said absently, following the rope rigging against the sky like black knife slashes on blue silk. “A year ago I’d never see you in for more than three days at once.”

The gesticulating arm suddenly encircled the smaller man’s waist and lifted a leather pouch from the wide belt. “Are you sure, friend Geo,” began the giant, “that we couldn’t use up some of this silver on wine before we go. If you want to do this right, then right is how it should be done. When you sign up on a ship you’re supposed to be broke and a little tight. It shows that you’re capable of getting along without the inconvenience of money and can hold your liquor, too.”

“Urson, get your paw off that.” Geo snatched the purse away.

“Now here,” countered Urson, reaching for it once more, “you don’t have to grab.”

“Look, I’ve kept you drunk five nights now, and it’s time to sober up. And suppose they don’t take us, who’s going—” But Urson, the idea having taken the glow of a game, made another swipe with his big hand.

Geo leapt back with the purse. “Now cut that out,” he began; but in leaping, his feet struck the fallen barrel, and he fell backwards to the wet cobbles. The pouch splattered away, jingling.

Both of them scrambled.

Then the bird’s shadow moved in the opening between the cargo piles, a slight figure bounded forward, swept the purse up with one hand, pushed himself away from the pile of cargo with another, and there were two more fists pumping at his side as he ran.

“What the devil,” began Urson, and then, “What the devil!”

“Hey you,” called Geo, lurching to his feet. “Come back!” And Urson had already loped a couple of steps after the fleeting mutant, now halfway down the block.

Suddenly, from behind them, like a wine-glass stem snapping, only twenty times as loud, a voice called, “Stop, little thief. Stop.”

The running form stopped as though it had hit a wall.

“Come back, now! Come back!”

The figure turned, and docilely started back, the movements so lithe and swift a moment ago, now mechanical.

“It’s just a kid,” Urson said.

He was a dark-haired boy, naked except for a ragged breech. He approached staring fixedly beyond them toward the boats. And he had four arms.

Now they turned and looked also.

She stood at the base of the ship’s gangplank, against what sun still washed the horizon. One hand held something close at her throat, and wind, caught in a veil, held the purple gauze against the red swath at the world’s edge, and then dropped it.

The boy, like an automaton, approached her.

“Give that to me, little thief,” she said.

He handed her the purse. She took it, and then suddenly dropped her other hand from her neck. The moment she did so, the boy staggered backwards, turned, and ran straight into Urson, who said, “Ooof,” and then, “God damn little spider.”

The boy struggled to get away like a hydra in furious silence. But Urson held. “You stick around… Owww!… to get yourself thrashed.… There.” The boy got turned, his back to the giant; one arm locked across his neck, and the other hand, holding all four wrists, lifted up hard enough so that the body shook like wires jerked taut, but he was still silent.

Now the woman came across the dock. “This belongs to you, gentlemen?” she asked, extending the purse.

“Thank you, ma’am,” grunted Urson, reaching forward.

“I’ll take it, ma’am,” said Geo, intercepting. Then he recited:

“Shadows melt in light of sacred laughter.

Hands and houses shall be one hereafter.

“Many thanks,” he added.

Beneath the veil, on her shadowed face, her eyebrows raised. “You have been schooled in courtly rites?” She observed him. “Are you perhaps a student at the university?”

Geo smiled. “I was, until a short time ago. But funds are low and I have to get through the summer somehow. I’m going to sea.”

“Honorable, but perhaps foolish.”

“I am a poet, ma’am; they say poets are fools. Besides, my friend here says the sea will make a man of me. To be a good poet, one must be a good man.”

“More honorable, less foolish. What sort of a man is your friend?”

“My name is Urson,” said the giant, stepping up. “I’ve been the best hand on any ship I’ve sailed on.”

“Urson?” said the woman, musing. “The Bear? I thought bears did not like water. Except polar bears. It makes them mad. I believe there was an old spell, in antiquity, for taming angry bears.… ”

“Calmly brother bear,” Geo began to recite.

“calm the winter sleep.

Fire shall not harm,

water not alarm.

While the current grows,

amber honey flaws,

golden salmon leap.”

“Hey,” said Urson. “I’m not a bear.”

“Your name means bear,” Geo said. Then to the lady, “You see, I have been well trained.”

“I’m afraid I have not,” she replied. “Poetry and rituals were a hobby of a year’s passing interest when I was younger. But that was all.” Now she looked down at the boy whom Urson still held. “You two look alike. Dark eyes, dark hair.” She laughed. “Are there other things in common between poets and thieves?”

“Well,” complained Urson with a jerk of his chin, “this one here won’t spare a few silvers for a drink of good wine to wet his best friend’s throat, and that’s a sort of thievery, if you ask me.”

“I did not ask,” said the woman, quietly.

Urson huffed.

“Little thief,” the woman said. “Little four arms. What is your name?”

Silence, and the dark eyes narrowed.

“I can make you tell me,” and she raised her hand to her throat again.

Now the eyes opened wide, and the boy pushed back against Urson’s belly.

Geo reached toward the boy’s neck where a ceramic disk hung from a leather thong. Glazed on the white enamel was a wriggle of black with a small dot of green for an eye at one end. “This will do for a name,” Geo said. “No need to harm him. Snake is his symbol; Snake shall be his name.”

“Little Snake,” she said, dropping her threatening hand, “how good a thief are you?” She looked at Urson. “Let him go.”

“And miss thrashing his backside?” objected Urson.

“He will not run away.”

Urson released him, and four hands came from behind the boy’s back and began massaging one another’s wrists. But the dark eyes watched her until she repeated, “How good a thief are you?”

With only a second’s indecision, he reached into his clout and drew out what seemed another leather thong similar to the one around his neck. He held up the fist from which it dangled, and the fingers opened slowly to a cage.

“What is it?” Urson asked, peering over Snake’s shoulder.

The woman gazed forward, then suddenly stood straight. “You…” she began.

Snake’s fist closed like a sea-polyp.

“You are a fine thief, indeed.”

“What is it?” Urson asked. “I didn’t see anything.”

“Show them,” she said.

Snake opened his hand, and on the dirty palm, in coiled leather, held by a clumsy wire cage, was a milky sphere the size of a man’s eye, lucent through the shadow.

“A very fine thief indeed,” repeated the woman in a low voice tautened strangely from its previous brittle clarity. She had pulled her veil aside now, and Geo saw, where her hand had again raised to her throat, the tips of her slim fingers held an identical jewel, only this one in a platinum claw, hung from a wrought gold chain.

Her eyes, unveiled, black as obsidian, raised to meet Geo’s. A slight smile lifted her pale mouth and then fell again. “No,” she said. “Not quite so clever as I thought. At first I believed he had taken mine. But clever enough. Clever enough. You, schooled in the antiquity of Leptar’s rituals, are you clever enough to tell me what these baubles mean?”

Geo shook his head.

A breath passed her pale mouth now, and though her eyes still fixed his, she seemed to draw away, blown into some past shadow by her own sigh. “No,” she said. “It has all been lost, or destroyed by the old priests and priestesses, the old poets.

“Freeze the drop in the hand

and break the earth with singing.

Hail the height of a man

and also the height of a woman.

The eyes have imprisoned a vision…”

She spoke the lines almost reverently. “Do you recognize any of this? Can you tell me where they are from?”

“Only one stanza of it,” said Geo. “And that in a slightly different form.” He recited:

“Burn the grain speck in the hand

and batter the stars with singing.

Hail the height of a man,

and also the height of a woman.”

“Well,” said the woman. “You have done better than all the priests and priestesses of Leptar. What about this fragment? Where is it from?”

“It is a stanza of the discarded rituals of the Goddess Argo, the ones banned and destroyed five hundred years ago. The rest of the poem is completely lost,” explained Geo. “I found that stanza when I peeled away the binding paper of an ancient tome that I found in the Antiquity Collection in the Temple Library at Acedia. Apparently a page from an even older book had been used in the binding of this one. I assume these are fragments of the rituals before Leptar purged her litanies. I know at least my variant stanza belongs to that period. Perhaps you have received a misquoted rendition; for I will vouch for the authenticity of mine.”

“No,” she said, almost regretfully. “Mine is the authentic version. So, you too, are not that clever.” She turned back to the boy. “But I have need of a good thief. Will you come with me? And you, poet, I have need of one who thinks so meticulously and who delves into places where even my priests and priestesses do not go. Will you come with me?”

“Where are we going?”

“Aboard that ship,” she said, smiling toward the vessel.

“That’s a good boat,” said Urson. “I’d be proud to sail on her, Geo.”

“The captain is in my service,” the woman told Geo. “He will take you on. Perhaps you will get a chance to see the world, and become the man you wish to be.”

Geo saw that Urson was beginning to look uneasy, and said, “My friend goes on whatever ship I do. This we’ve promised each other. Besides, he is a good sailor, while I have no knowledge of the sea.”

“On our last journey,” the woman explained, “we lost men. I do not think your friend will have trouble getting a berth.”

“Then we’ll be honored to come,” said Geo. “Under whose service shall we be, then, for we still don’t know who you are?”

Now the veil fell across her face again. “I am a high priestess of the Goddess Argo. Now, who are you?”

“My name is Geo,” Geo told her.

“Of the Earth, then, your name,” she said. “And you, Urson, the bear. And Lamio, the little Snake. I welcome you aboard our ship.”

Just then, from down the street, came the captain and the mate, Jordde. They emerged from the diagonal of shadow that lanced over the cobbles, slowly, heavily. The captain squinted out across the ships toward the horizon, the copper light filling his deepening wrinkles and burnishing the planes of flesh around his gray eyes. As they approached, the priestess turned to them. “Captain, I have three men as a token replacement at least for the ones my folly helped lose.”

Urson, Geo, and Snake looked at each other, and then toward the captain.

Jordde looked at all three.

“You seem strong,” the captain said to Urson, “a sea-bred man. But this one,” and he looked at Snake now, “one of the Strange Ones.… ”

“They’re bad luck on a ship,” interrupted the mate. “Most ships won’t take them at all, ma’am. This one’s just a boy, and for all his spindles there, couldn’t haul rope or reef sails. Ma’am, he’d be no good to us at all. And we’ve had too much bad luck already.”

“He’s not for rope pulling,” laughed the priestess. “The little Snake is my guest. The others you can put to ship’s work. I know you are short of men. But I have my own plans for this one.”

“As you say, ma’am,” said the captain.

“But Priestess,” began Jordde.

“As you say,” repeated the captain, and the mate stepped back, quieted. The captain turned to Geo now. “And who are you?” he asked.

“I’m Geo, before and still a poet. But I’ll do what work you set me, sir.”

“And you?” Jordde asked Urson.

“I’m a good sea-son of the waves, can stand triple watch without flagging, and I believe I’m already hired.” He looked to the captain.

“But what do they call you?” Jordde asked. “You have a familiar look, like one I’ve had under me before.”

“They call me the handsome sailor, the fastest rope reeler, the quickest line hauler, the speediest sheaf reefer.… ”

“Your name, man, your name,” Jordde demanded.

“Some call me Urson.”

“That’s the name I knew you by before! Do you think I’d sail with you again, when I myself put it in black and white and sent it to every captain and mate in the dock? For three months now you’ve had no berth, and if you had none for three hundred years it would be too soon.”

Jordde turned to the captain now. “He’s a troublemaker, sir, a fight-starter. Though he’s as wild as waves and with the strength of mizzen spars, spirit in a man is one thing, and a fight or two the same; but good sailor though he be, I’ve sworn not to have him on ship with me, sir. He’s nearly murdered half a dozen men and probably has murdered half a dozen more. No mate who knows the men of this harbor will take him on.”

The Priestess of Argo laughed. “Captain, take him.” Now she looked at Geo. “The words for calming the angry bear have been recited before him. Now, Geo, we will see how good a poet you are, and if the spell works.” At last she turned toward Urson. “Have you ever killed a man.”

Urson was silent a moment. “I have.”

“Had you told me that,” said the Priestess, “I would have chosen you first. I have need of you also. Captain, you must take him. If he is a good sailor, then we cannot spare him. I will channel what special talents he may have. Geo, since you said the spell, and are his friend, I charge you with his control. Also, I wish to talk with you, poet, student of rituals. Come, you all may stay on board ship tonight.”

CHAPTER II

An oil lamp leaked yellow light on the wooden walls of the ship’s forecastle. Geo wrinkled his nose, then shrugged.

“Well,” said Urson, “this is a pleasant enough hole.” He climbed one of the tiers of bunked beds and pounded the ticking with the flat of his hand. “Here, I’ll take this one. Little wriggly arms, you look like you have a strong stomach, so you take the middle. And Geo, sling yourself down in the bottom there.” He clumped to the floor again. “The lower down you are,” he explained, “the better you sleep, because of the rocking. Well, what do you think of your first forecastle, Geo?”

The poet was silent. As he turned his head, double pins of light struck yellow dots in his dark eyes, and then went out as he turned from the lamp.

“I put you in the bottom because a little rough weather can unseat your belly pretty fast if you’re up near the ceiling and not used to it,” Urson expanded, dropping his hand heavily on Geo’s shoulder. “I told you I’d look out for you, didn’t I, friend?”

But Geo turned away and seemed to examine something else.

Urson looked at Snake now, who was watching him from against one wall. Urson’s glance was puzzled. Snake’s only silent.

“Hey.” Urson spoke to Geo once more. “Let’s you and me take a run around this ship and see what’s tied down where. A good sailor does that first thing—unless he’s too drunk. But that lets the captain and the mate know he’s got an alert eye out, and sometimes he can learn something that will ease some back-bending later on. What do you say?”

“Not now, Urson,” interrupted Geo. “You go.”

“And would you please tell me why my company suddenly isn’t good enough for you. This sudden silence is a bilgy way to treat somebody who’s sworn himself to see that you make the best first voyage that a man could have. Why, I think…”

“When did you kill a man?” Geo suddenly turned.

The giant stood still, his hands twisting into double knots of bone and muscle. Then they opened. “Maybe it was a year ago,” he said softly. “And maybe it was a year, two months, and five days, on a Thursday morning at eight o’clock in the brig of a heaving ship. Which would make it about five days and ten hours.”

“How could you kill a man?” Geo asked. “How could you go for a year and not tell me about it, and then admit it to a stranger just like that? You were my friend, we’ve slept under the same blanket, drank from the same wineskin. But what sort of a person are you?”

“And what sort of a person are you?” said the giant. “A nosy bastard that I’d break in seven pieces if…” he heaved in a breadth. “If I hadn’t promised I’d make no trouble. I’ve never broken a promise to anyone, alive or dead.” The fists formed, relaxed again.

Suddenly he raised one hand, flung it away, and spat on the floor. Then he turned toward the steps to the door.

Then the noise hit them. They both turned toward Snake. The boy’s black eyes darted under twin spots of light from the lamp, to Urson, to Geo, then back.

The noise came again, quieter this time, and recognizable as the word Help, only it was no sound, but like the fading hum of a tuning fork inside their skulls, immediate, yet fuzzy.

…You…help…me…together… came the words once more, indistinct and blurring into one another.

“Hey,” Urson said, “is that you?”

…Do…not…angry… came the words.

“We’re not angry,” Geo said. “What are you doing?”

I…thinking… were the words that seemed to generate from the boy now.

“What sort of a way to think is that if everyone can hear it?” demanded Urson.

Snake tried to explain. Not…everyone… Just…you… You…think…I…hear… came the sound again. I…think… You…hear.

“I know we hear,” Urson said. “It’s just like you were talking.”

“That’s not what he means,” Geo said. “He means he hears what we think just like we hear him. Is that right, Snake?”

When…you…think…loud…I…hear.

“I may just have been doing some pretty loud thinking,” Urson said. “And if I thought something I wasn’t supposed to, well, I apologize.”

Snake didn’t seem interested in the apology, but asked again, You…help…me…together.

“What sort of help do you want?” Geo asked.

“And what sort of trouble are you in that you need help out of it?” added Urson.

You…don’t…have…good…minds, Snake said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Urson asked. “Our minds are as good as any in Leptar. You heard the way the priestess talked to my friend the poet, here.”

“I think he means we don’t hear very well,” said Geo.

Snake nodded.

“Oh,” Urson said. “Well, then you’ll just have to go slow and be patient with us.”

Snake shook his head. Get…hoarse…when…shout…so…loud. Suddenly he went over to the bunks. You…hear…better…see…too if…sleep.

“Sleep is sort of far from me,” Urson said, rubbing his beard with the back of his wrist.

“Me too,” Geo admitted. “Can’t you tell us something more?”

Sleep, Snake said.

“What about talking like an ordinary human being?” suggested Urson, still somewhat perplexed.

Once…speak, Snake told them.

“You say you could speak once?” asked Geo. “What happened?”

Here the boy opened his mouth and pointed.

Geo stepped forward, held the boy’s chin in his hand and examined the face and peered into the mouth. “By the Goddess!” he exclaimed.

“What is it?” Urson asked.

Geo came away now, his face lined in a sickly frown. “His tongue has been hacked out,” he told the giant. “And not too neatly, either.”

“Who on the seven seas and six continents did a thing like that to you, boy?” Urson demanded.

Snake shook his head.

“Now come on, Snake,” he urged. “You can’t keep secrets like that from friends and expect them to rescue you from I don’t know what. Now who was it hacked your voice away?”

What…man…you…kill… came the sound.

Urson stopped, and then he laughed. “All right,” he said. “I see.” His voice rose once more. “But if you can hear thoughts, you know the man already. And you know the reason. And this is what we’d find out of you, and only for help and friendship’s sake.”

You…know…the…man, Snake said.

Geo and Urson exchanged puzzled frowns.

Sleep, said Snake. You…sleep…now.

“Maybe we ought to try,” said Geo, “and find out what’s going on.” He crossed to his bunk and slipped in. Urson followed and hoisted himself onto the upper berth, dangling his feet against the wooden support. “It’s going to be a long time before sleep gets to me tonight,” he said. “You know the rituals and about magic. Aren’t the Strange Ones some sort of magic?”

“The only mention of them in rituals says that they are ashes of the Great Fire. The Great Fire was back before the purges, the ones I spoke to the priestess about, so I don’t know anything more about them.”

“Sailors have stories of the Great Fire,” Urson said. “They say the sea boiled, great birds spat fire from the sky, and beasts rose up from the waves and destroyed the harbors. But what were the purges you mentioned?”

“About five hundred years ago,” Geo explained, “all the rituals of the Goddess Argo were destroyed. A completely new set were initiated into the temple practices. All references to them were destroyed also, and with them, much of Leptar’s history. Stories have it that the rituals and incantations were too powerful. But this is just a guess, and most priests are very uncomfortable about speculating.”

“That was after the Great Fire?” Urson asked.

“Nearly a thousand years after,” Geo said.

“It must have been a Great Fire indeed if ashes from it are still falling from the wombs of healthy women.” He looked down at Snake. “Is it true that a drop of your blood in vinegar will cure gout? If one of you kisses a female baby, will she have only girl children?” He laughed.

“You know those are only tales,” Geo said.

“There used to be a one with two heads that sat outside the Blue Tavern and spun a top all day. It was an idiot, though. But the dwarfs and the legless ones that wheel about the city and do tricks, they are clever. But strange, and quiet, usually.”

“You oaf,” chided Geo, “you could be one too. How many men do you know who reach your size and strength by normal means?”

“You’re a crazy liar,” said Urson. Then he scrunched his eyebrows together in thought, and at last shrugged. “Well anyway, I never heard of one who could hear what you thought. It would make me uncomfortable walking down the street.” He looked down at Snake between his legs. “Can you all do that?”

Snake, from the middle bunk, shook his head. Urson stretched out on his back, but then suddenly looked over the edge of the berth toward Geo. “Hey, Geo, what about those little baubles she had. Do you know what they are?”

“No, I don’t,” Geo said. “But she was concerned over them enough.” He looked up over the bunk bottom between himself and Urson. “Snake, will you give me another look at that thing?”

Snake held out the thong and the jewel.

“Where did you get it?” Urson asked. “Oh, never mind. I guess we learn that when we go to sleep.”

Geo reached for it, but Snake’s one hand closed and three others sprang around it. “I wasn’t going to take it,” explained Geo. “I just wanted to see.”

Suddenly the door of the forecastle opened, and the tall mate was silhouetted against the brighter light behind him. “Poet,” he called. “She wants to see you.” Then he was gone.

Geo looked at the other two, shrugged, and then swung off the berth, made his way up the steps and into the hall.

On deck it was completely dark. As he walked, a door before him opened and a blade of illumination sliced the deck. He jumped.

“Come in,” summoned the Priestess of Argo, and he turned into a windowless cabin and stopped one step beyond the threshold. The walls rippled tapestries, lucent green, scarlet. Golden braziers perched on tapering legged tripods beneath plumes of pale blue smoke that lent thin incense in the room, pierced faintly but cleanly into his nostrils like knives. Light lashed the polished wooden newels of a great bed on which sat swirls of silk, damasked satin, brocade. A huge desk, cornered with wooden eagles, was spread with papers, meticulous instruments of cartography, sextants, rules, compasses, and great shabby books were piled on one corner. Above, from the beamed ceiling, hung by thick chains, swayed a branching candelabra of oil cups, some in the hands of demons, the mouths of monkeys, burning in the bellies of nymphs, or between the horns of satyrs’ heads—red, clear green, or yellow-white.

“Come in,” repeated the priestess. “Close the door.”

Geo obeyed.

She walked behind her desk, sat down, and folded her hands in front of her veiled face. “What do you know of the real world, outside Leptar?”

“That there is much water, some land, and mostly ignorance.”

“What tales have you heard from your bear friend, Urson? He is a traveled man and should know some of what there is of the earth.”

“The stories of sailors,” said Geo, “are menageries of beasts that no one has ever seen, of lands for which no maps exist, and of peoples whom no man has met.”

She smiled. “Since I boarded this ship I have heard many tales from sailors, and I have learned more from them than from all my priests. You, on the docks there, this evening, have been the only man to give me another scrap of the puzzle except a few drunken seamen, misremembering old fantasies.” She paused. “What do you know of the jewels you saw tonight?”

“Nothing, ma’am.”

“A common thief hiding on the docks had one; I, a priestess of Argo, possess another; and if you had one, you would probably exchange it for a kiss with some tavern maid. What do you know of the god Hama?”

“I know of no such god.”

“You,” she said, “who can spout all the rituals and incantations of the white goddess Argo, you do not even know the name of the dark god Hama. What do you know of the Island of Aptor?”

“Nothing, ma’am.”

“This boat has been to Aptor once and now will return again. Ask your ignorant friend the Bear to tell you tales of Aptor; and blind, wise poet, you will laugh, and probably he will, too. But I will tell you: his tales, his legends, and his fantasies are not a tithe of the truth, not a tithe. Perhaps you will be no help after all. I am thinking of dismissing you.”

“But, ma’am…” Geo began.

The priestess looked up, having been about to begin some work.

Geo regained himself. “Ma’am, what can you tell me about these things? You have scattered only crumbs. I have extensive knowledge of incantation, poetry, magic, and I know these concern your problem. Give me what information you have, and I will be able to render mine in full. I am familiar with many sailors’ tales. True, none of Aptor, or Hama, but I may be able to collate fragments. I have learned the legends and jargon of thieves through a broad life; this is more than your priests have, I’ll wager. I have had teachers who were afraid to touch books I have opened. And I fear no secret you might hold.”

“No, you are not afraid,” admitted the priestess. “You are honorable, and foolish—and a poet. I hope the first and last will wipe out the middle one in time. Nevertheless, I will tell you some.” She stood up now, and drew out a map.

“Here is Leptar,” she pointed to one island. Then her finger moved over water to another. “This is Aptor. Now you know as much about it as any ordinary person in Leptar might. Aptor is a barbaric land, uncivilized. Yet they occasionally show some insidious organization. Tell me, what legends of the Great Fire have you heard?”

“I know that beasts are supposed to have come from the sea and destroyed the world’s harbors, and that birds spat fire from the sky.”

“The older sailors,” said the priestess, “will tell you that these were beasts and birds of Aptor. Of course, there is fifteen hundred years of retelling and distortion in a tradition never written down, and perhaps Aptor has simply become a synonym for everything evil, but these stories still give you some idea. Chronicles, which only three or four people have had access to, tell me that once five hundred years ago, the forces of Aptor actually attempted to invade Leptar. The references to it are vague. I do not know how far it went nor how successful it was, but its methods were insidious and very unlike any invasion you may have read of in history. So unlike, that records of it were destroyed, and no mention of it is made in the histories given to school children.

“Only recently have I had a chance to learn how strange and inhuman they were. And I have good reason to believe that the forces of Aptor are congealing once more, a sluggish but huge amoeba of horror. Once fully awake, once launched, it will be irrevocable. Tendrils have reached into us for the past few years, probed, and then withdrawn before they were recognized. Sometimes they dealt catastrophic blows to the center of Leptar’s government and religion. All this has been assiduously kept from the people. I have been sent to clear perhaps just one more veil from our ignorance. And if you can help me in that, you are welcome.”

“What of the jewels, and of Hama?” inquired Geo. “Is he a god of Aptor under whom these forces are being marshaled? And are these jewels sacred to him in some way?”

“Both are true, and both are not true enough,” replied the priestess.

“And one more thing. You say the last attempted invasion by Aptor into Leptar was five hundred years ago? It was five hundred years ago that the religion of Argo in Leptar purged all her rituals and instituted new ones. Was there some connection between the invasion and the purge?”

“I am sure of it,” declared the priestess. “But I do not know what it is. However, let me now tell you the story of the jewels. The one I wear at my neck was captured, somehow, from Aptor during that first invasion. That we captured it may well be the reason that we are still a free nation today. Since then it has been guarded carefully in the temple of the Goddess Argo, its secrets well protected, along with those few chronicles which mention the invasion, which ended, incidentally, only a month before the purges. Then, about a year ago, a small hoard of horror reached our shore from Aptor. I cannot describe it. I did not see any of what transpired. But they made their way inland, and managed to kidnap Argo herself.”

“You mean Argo incarnate? The highest priestess?”

“Yes. Each generation, as you know, the youngest daughter of the past generation’s highest priestess is chosen as the living incarnation of the white Goddess Argo. She is reared and taught by the wisest priests and priestesses. Her youngest daughter, when she dies, becomes Argo. At any rate, she was kidnaped. One of the assailants was hacked down; instantly it decayed, rotted on the floor of the convent corridor. But from the putrescent mass of flesh, we salvaged a second jewel from Aptor. And before it died, it was heard to utter the lines I quoted to you before. So, I have been sent then, to find what I can of the enemy, and to rescue or to find the fate of my sister.”

“I will do whatever I can,” said Geo, “to help save Leptar and to discover the whereabouts of your sister priestess.”

“More than my sister priestess,” said the woman softly, “my sister in blood. I am the other daughter of the last Argo: that is why this task fell to me. And until she is found dead, or returned alive…” here she rose from her bench, “…I am the White Goddess Argo Incarnate.”

Geo dropped his eyes as Argo lifted her veil. Once more that evening she held forth the jewel. “There are three of these,” she said. “Hama’s sign is a black disk with three white eyes. Each eye represents a jewel. With the first invasion, they probably carried all three jewels, for they are the center of their power. Without them, they would have been turned back immediately. With them, they thought themselves invincible. But we captured one, and very soon unlocked its secrets. I have no guards with me. With this jewel I need none. I am as safe as I would be with an army, and capable of nearly as much destruction. When they came to kidnap my sister a year ago, I am convinced they carried both of their remaining jewels, thinking that we had either lost, or did not know the power of the first. Anyway, they reasoned, they had two to our one. But now, we have two, and they are left with only one. Through some complete carelessness, your little thief stole one from me as I was about to board when we first departed two months ago. Today he probably recognized me and intended to exact some fee for its return. But now, he will be put to a true thief’s task. He must steal for me the third and final jewel from Hama for me. Then we shall have Aptor, and be rid of their evil.”

“And where is this third jewel?” asked Geo.

“Perhaps,” said the woman, “perhaps it is lodged in the forehead of the statue of the dark god Hama that sits in the guarded palace somewhere in the center of the jungles of Aptor. Do you think your thief will find himself challenged enough?”

“I think so,” answered Geo.

“Somewhere in that same palace is my sister, or her remains. You are to find them, and if she is alive, bring her back with you.”

“And what of the jewels?” asked Geo. “When will you show us their power so that we may use them to penetrate the palace of Hama?”

“I will show you their power,” said Argo, smiling. With one hand she held up the map over which she had spoken. With the other she tapped the white jewel with her pale fingernail. The map suddenly blackened at one edge, and then flared. Argo walked to a brazier and deposited the flaming paper. Then she turned again to Geo. “I can fog the brain of a single person, as I did with Snake; or I can bewilder a hundred men. As easily as I can fire a dried, worn map, I can raze a city.”

“With those to help,” smiled Geo, “I think we have a fair chance to reach this Hama, and return.”

But the smile with which she answered his was strange, and then suddenly it was completely gone. “Do you think,” she said, “that I would put such temptation in your hands? You might be captured, and if so, then the jewels would be in the hands of Aptor once more.”

“But with them we would be so powerful.… ”

“They have been captured once; we cannot take the chance that they be captured again. If you reach the palace, if you can steal the third jewel, if my sister is alive, and if you can rescue her, then she will know how to employ its power to manipulate your escape. However, if you and your friends do not accomplish all these things, the trip will be useless; and so perhaps death would be better than a return to watch the wrath of Argo in her dying struggle, for you would feel it more horribly than even the most malicious torture of Aptor’s evil.”

Geo did not speak.

“Why do you look so strangely?” asked Argo. “You have your poetry, your spells, your scholarship. Don’t you believe in their power? Go back to your berth, and send the thief to me.” The last words were a sharp order, and Geo turned from the room into the night’s darkness.

CHAPTER III

Geo walked down into the forecastle, still deserted except for Urson and Snake. “Well?” asked Urson, sitting up on the edge of his berth. “What did she tell you?”

“Why aren’t you asleep?” Geo said heavily. He touched Snake on the shoulder. “She wants to see you now.”

Snake stood up, started for the door, but then turned around.

“What is it?” Geo asked.

Snake dug into his clout again and pulled out the thong with the jewel. He walked over to Geo, hesitated, and then placed the thong around the older boy’s neck.

“You want me to keep it for you?” Geo asked.

But Snake turned around and was gone.

“I wonder what they do?” said Urson. “Or did you find out. Come on, Geo, give up what she told you.”

“Did Snake say anything to you while I was gone?”

“Not a peep,” answered Urson. “I came no nearer sleep than I came to the moon. Now come on, what’s this about?”

Geo told him.

When he finished, Urson said, “You’re crazy. Both you and her.”

“I don’t think so,” Geo said. He concluded his story by recounting Argo’s demonstration of the jewel’s power.

Urson fingered the stone on Geo’s chest. “All that in this little thing? Tell me, do you think you can figure out how it works?”

“I don’t know if I want to,” Geo said. “It doesn’t sound right.”

“You’re damn straight it doesn’t sound right,” Urson reiterated. “What’s the point of sending us in there with no protection to do something that would be crazy with a whole army. What’s she got against us?”

“I don’t think she has anything against us,” Geo said. “Urson, what stories do you know about Aptor? She said you might be able to tell me something.”

“I know that no one trades with it, everyone curses by it, and the rest is a lot of rubbish not worth saying.”

“What rubbish?”

“Believe me, it’s just bilge water,” insisted Urson. “Do you think you could figure out that little stone there, if you had long enough, I mean? She said that the priests five hundred years ago could, and she seems to think you’re as smart as some of them. I wouldn’t doubt if you could work it.”

“You tell me some stories first,” said Geo.

“Oh, they talk about cannibals, women who drink blood, things neither man nor animal, and cities inhabited only by death. Sailors avoid it, save to curse by.”

“Do you know anything more than that?”

“There’s nothing more to know,” shrugged Urson.

“She said the stories you’d tell would not be one tenth of the truth.”

“She must have meant that there wasn’t even a tenth part of the truth in them. And I’m sure she’s right. You just misunderstood.”

“No, I heard her correctly,” Geo assured him.

“Then I just don’t believe it. There are half a dozen things that don’t match up in all this. First, how that little four-armed fellow happened to be at the pier after two months just when she was coming in. And to have the jewel still, not have traded it, or sold it already.… ”

“Maybe,” suggested Geo, “he read her mind too, when he first stole it, the same way he read ours.”

“And if he did, maybe he knows how to work the things. I say let’s find out when he comes back. And I wonder who cut his tongue out. Strange one or not, that makes me sick,” said the big man.

“About that,” Geo started. “Don’t you remember? He said you knew the man it was.”

“I know many men,” said Urson, “but which one of the many I know is it?”

“You really don’t know?” Geo asked, quietly.

“You say that in a strange way,” Urson said, frowning.

“I’ll say the same thing he said,” went on Geo. “What man did you kill?”

Urson looked at his hands for a moment, stretched the fingers, turned them over in his lap like meat he was examining. Then, without looking up, he said, “It was a long time ago, friend, but the closeness of it shivers in my eyes. I should have told you, yes. But it comes to me, sometimes, not like a memory, but something I can feel, as hard as metal, taste as sharp as salt, and the wind brings back my voice, his words, so clearly that I shake like a mirror where the figure on the inside pounds his fists on the fists of the man outside, each one trying to break free.

“We were reefing sails in a flesh-blistering rain, when it began. His name was Cat. The two of us were the two biggest men aboard, and that we had been put on the reefing team together meant that this was an important job and one to be done well and right. Water washed our eyes, our hands slipped on wet ropes. It was no wonder my cloth suddenly flung away from me in a gust, billowing down in the rain, flapping against half a dozen ropes and breaking two small stays. ‘You clumsy thing’ bawled the mate from the deck. ‘What sort of fish-fingered sailor, are you?’

“And through the rain I heard Cat laugh from his own spar. ‘That’s the way luck goes,’ he cried, catching at his own cloth that threatened to pull loose. I pulled mine in and bound her tight. The competition that goes rightly between two fine sailors drove a seed of fury into my flesh that should have bloomed as a curse or a returned jibe, but the rain rained too hard, and the wind was too strong; so I bound my sail with silence.

“I was last down, of course, and with only a few lads below on deck, when I saw why my sail had come loose. A worn mast ring had broken, caused a main rope to fly and my canvas to come tumbling. But the ring also had held the nearly broken aft mast together, and in the wind, a split twice the length of my arm pulled open and snapped to again and again like a child’s noise clapper. There was a rope near, and inch thick line coiled on a spike. Holding myself to a rat line by not much more than my toes, I secured the rope and bound the base of the broken pole. Each time it snapped to, I looped it once around and pulled the wet line tight. They call this whipping a mast, and I whipped it till the collar of rope was three feet long to the top of the cleft and she couldn’t snap any more. Then I hung the broken ring on a peg near by so I could point it out to the ship’s smith and get him to replace the rope with a metal band.

“That evening at mess, with the day’s incidents out of my mind and hot soup in my mouth, I was laughing over some sailor’s tale about another sailor and another sailor’s woman, when the mate strode into the hall. ‘Hey, you sea scoundrels,’ he bellowed. There was silence. ‘Which of you bound up that broken mast aft?’

“I was about to call out, ‘Aye, it was me,’ when another man beat me by bawling, ‘It was the Big Sailor, sir!’ That was a name both Cat and I were often hailed by.

“‘Well,’ snarled the mate, ‘the captain says that such good thinking in times so hard as these should be rewarded. He’s seen the job and approved.’ He took a gold coin from his pocket and tossed it on the table in front of Cat. ‘There you go, Big Sailor. But I think it’s as much as any man should do.’ And then he turned and clomped from the mess hall. A cheer went up for Cat as he pocketed the coin; I couldn’t see his face.

“The anger in me started now, but without direction. Should it go to the sailor who’d called out the name of the hero? Naw, for he had been down on deck, and through rain and darkness probably he could not have told me from my rival anyway at that distance. At Cat? But he was already getting up to leave the table. And the first mate, the same first mate of this ship here, friend, that we’re on now, he was out stomping somewhere on deck.

“Perhaps it was this that caused my anger to break out the next morning when we were in calmer weather. A careless salt jarred me in a passage way, and suddenly I was all fists and fire. We scuffled, we banged, we cursed, we rolled. In fact, we rolled right under the feet of the mate who was coming down the steps at the time. He sent a boot into us and eight different curses, and when he recognized me, he sneered, ‘Oh, the clumsy one.’

“Now I’d had a fiery record before. Fights on ship are a breach few captains will allow. This was my third, and one too many. And the mate, prompted by his own opinion of me, got the captain to order me flogged.

“So, like a carcass to be sliced and bid on, I was lead out before the assembled sailors at the next sunrise and bound to the main mast. I thought my wrath went all toward the first mate now. But black turned white in my head, into something that I could bite into, when he flung the whip to Cat and cried, ‘Here, Big Sailor, you’ve done your ship one good turn. Now rub sleep off your face and do it another. I want ten stripes on that one’s back deep enough to count easily with a finger dipped in salt.’

“They fell, and I didn’t breathe the whole time. Ten lashes is a whipping a man can recover from in a week. Most go down to their knees with the first one, if their rope is slack enough. I didn’t fall until they finally cut the ropes from my wrists. Nor was it till I heard a second gold coin rattle down on the deck from the first mate’s hand and the words to the crew, ‘See how a good sailor gets rich,’ that I made a sound. And it was lost in the cheer which sprung from the other men.

“Cat and one other lugged me to the brig. As I fell forward, hands scudding into straw, I heard Cat’s voice come, ‘Well, brother, that’s the way the luck goes.’

“Then the pain made me faint.

“A day later, when I could pull myself up to the window and look out on the back of the ship, we caught the worst storm I’d ever seen, and the slices in my back made it no easier on me. Pegs threatened to pull from their holes, boards to part themselves; one wave washed four men overboard; and while others ran to save them, another came and swept off six more. It had come so suddenly that not a sail had been raised, and now the remaining men were swarming to the ratlines.

“From my place at the brig’s window I saw it start to go and I howled like an animal, tried to pull the bars away. But legs passed my window running, and none stopped. I screamed at them, and I screamed again. The ship’s smith had not yet gotten to fix my makeshift repair on the aft mast with another metal band. Nor, with my anger, had I yet even pointed it out to him as I had intended. It didn’t hold a quarter of an hour. When it gave there was a snap like thunder. Under the tugging of half furled sails, ropes popped like threads. Men were whipped off like drops of water shaken from a wet hand. The mast raked across the sky above me like a claw, and then fell against the high mizzen, snapping more ropes and scraping men from their perches as you’d scrape ants from a tree.

“The crew’s number was halved, and when somehow we crawled from under the sheets of rain, one mast fallen and one more ruined, the broken bodies with still some life numbered eleven. A ship’s infirmary holds ten, and the overflow goes to the brig. The choice of who became my mate was between the man most likely to live, figuring that he could take the harder situation more easily than the others, and the man most likely to die, figuring that it would probably make no difference to some one that far gone. The choice was made, the latter choice, and the next morning they carried Cat in and laid him beside me on the straw while I slept. His spine had been crushed at the pelvis and a spar had pierced his side with a hole big enough to put your hand into.

“When he came to, all he did was cry—not with the agonized howls I had given the day before when I watched the mast topple, but with a little sound that escaped from clenched teeth, like a child who doesn’t want to show the pain. It didn’t stop for hours, and such a soft sound, it burned into my gut and my tongue deeper than any animal wailing would.

“The next dawn stretched copper foil across the window and reddish light fell on the straw, the board floor, and the filthy, crumpled blanket they had laid him in. The crying had stopped and was replaced now by a gasped breath, sharp every few seconds, irregular, loud. I thought he must be unconscious, but when I kneeled to look, his eyes were opened and he stared straight into my face. ‘You…’ he said to me with the next gasp. ‘It hurts… You…’

“‘Be still,’ I said. ‘Here, be still.’

“The next word I thought I heard was water, but there wasn’t any in the cell. I should have realized that the ship’s supplies had probably gone for the most part overboard. But by now, hungry and thirsty myself, I could see it as nothing less than a stupendous joke when one slice of bread and a single tin cup of water were finally brought and embarrassedly and silently handed in to us about seven that morning.

“Nevertheless, I opened his mouth and tried to pour some of it down his throat. They say a man’s mouth and tongue turn black from fever and thirst after a while. It’s not true. The color is the deep purple of rotten, shriveled meat. And every taste bud on the dead flesh was tipped with that white stuff that gets in your mouth when your bowels are upset. He couldn’t swallow the water. It just dribbled over the side of his mouth that was scabbed with purple crust.

“He blinked his eyes and once more got out, ‘You… you please…’ and then he began to cry again.

“‘What is it?’ I asked.

“Suddenly he began to struggle and got his hand into the breast of his torn tunic and pulled out a fist. He held it out toward me and said, ‘Please…please…’

“The fingers opened and I saw three gold coins, two of whose histories suddenly leapt into my mind like stories of living men.

“I moved back as if burned; then I leaned forward again. ‘What do you want?’ I asked.

“‘Please…’ he said, moving his hand toward me. ‘Kill…kill…’ and then he was crying once more. ‘It hurts so bad…’

“I got up. I walked across to the other side of the cell. I came back. Then I broke his neck with my knee and my two hands.

“I took my pay up. Later I ate the bread and drank the rest of the water. Then I went to sleep. They took him away without question. And two days later, when the next food came, I realized, sort of absently, that without all of that first bread and water I would have starved to death. They finally let me out because they needed the muscle, what was left of it. And the only thing I sometimes think about, the only thing I let myself think about, is whether or not I earned my pay. I guess two of them were mine anyway. But sometimes I take them out and look at them, and wonder where he got the third one from.”

Urson put his hand in his tunic and brought out three gold coins. “Never been able to spend them, though,” he said. He tossed the little pile into the air, and then whipped them back into his fist again, and laughed. “Never was able to spend them on anything.”

“I’m sorry,” Geo said after a moment.

Urson looked up. “Why? I guess these are my jewels, huh? Maybe everyone has theirs some place. You think it was old Cat, maybe, sometimes when I was in the brig, perhaps, earning that third coin, slicing out that little four-armed monster’s tongue? Somehow I doubt it.”

“Look, I said I was sorry, Urson.”

“I know,” Urson said. “I know. I guess I’ve met a hell full of people in my short, wet life, and it could be any one of them.” He sighed. “Though I wish I knew which. But I don’t think that’s the answer.” He lifted his hand to his mouth now and gnawed at his thumb nail. “I hope that kid doesn’t get as nervous as I do,” he laughed. “He’ll have such a hell of a lot of nails to bite.”

Then their skulls nearly split apart.

“Hey,” said Geo, “that’s Snake.”

“And he’s in trouble too,” said Urson. He leaped onto the floor and started up the passageway. Geo came after him.

“Let me go first,” Geo said, “I know where he is.”

They reached the deck, raced along the side of the cabins, until they reached the door.

“Move,” ordered Urson. Then he rammed against the door and it flew open.

Inside, behind her desk, Argo whirled, her hand on her jewel. “What is the…”

But the moment her concentration turned, Snake, who had been immobile against the opposite wall, suddenly vaulted across the table toward Geo. Geo grabbed the boy to steady him, and immediately one of Snake’s hands was at Geo’s chest where the jewel hung.

“You fools!” hissed Argo. “Don’t you understand? He’s a spy for Aptor.”

There was a sudden silence.

Then Argo said, “Close the door.”

Urson closed it. Snake still held Geo and the jewel.

“Well,” she said. “It is too late now.”

“What do you mean?” asked Geo.

“That had you not come blundering in, one more of Aptor’s spies would have yielded up his secrets and then been reduced to ashes.” She breathed deeply. “But he has his jewel now, and I have mine. Well, little thief, there’s a stalemate. The forces are balanced now.” She looked at Geo. “How do you think he came so easily by the jewel? How do you think he knew when I would be at the shore? Oh, he’s a clever one, with all the intelligence of Aptor working behind him. He probably even had you planted without your knowing it to interrupt us at just that time.”

“No, he…” began Urson.

“We were walking by your door,” Geo interrupted, “when we heard a noise and thought there might be trouble.”

“Your concern may have cost us all our lives.”

“If he’s a spy, I gather that means he knows how this thing works,” said Geo. “Let Urson and I take him…”

“Take him anywhere you wish!” hissed Argo. “Get out!”

Just then the door opened. “I heard a sound, Priestess Argo, and I thought you might be in danger.” It was the first mate.

The Goddess Incarnate breathed deeply. “I am in no danger,” she said evenly. “Will you please leave me alone, all of you.”

“What’s the Snake doing here?” Jordde suddenly asked, seeing Geo still holding the boy.

“I said, leave me!”

Geo turned, away from Jordde, and stepped past him onto the deck, and Urson followed him. Ten steps farther on, he glanced back, and seeing that Jordde had emerged from the cabin and was walking in the other direction, he set Snake down on his feet. “All right, Little One. March!”

In the passage to the forecastle, Urson asked, “Hey, what’s going on?”

“Well, for one thing, our little friend here is no spy,” said Geo.

“How do you know?” asked Urson.

“Because she doesn’t know he can read minds.”

“How do you mean?” Urson asked.

“First of all, I was beginning to think something was wrong when I came back from talking to the priestess. You were too, and it lay in the same vein you were talking about. Why would our task be completely useless unless we accomplished all parts of her mission? Wouldn’t there be some value in just returning her sister, the rightful head of Leptar, to her former position? And I’m sure her sister may well have collected some useful information that could be used against Aptor, so that would be some value even if we didn’t find the jewel. It doesn’t sound too sisterly a thing to me to forsake the young priestess if there is no jewel in it for her. And her tone, the way she refers to the jewel ashers. There’s an old saying, from before the Great Fire even: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And I think she has not a little of the un-goddess-like desire for power first, peace afterwards.”

“But that doesn’t mean this one isn’t an Aptor spy,” said Urson.

“Wait a minute. I’m getting there. At first I thought he was too. The idea occurred to me first when I was talking to the priestess and she first mentioned that there were spies from Aptor. The coincidence of his appearance, that he had even managed to steal the jewel in the first place, that he would present it to her the way he did; all this hinted something so strange, that spy was the first thing I thought of, and I’m sure it was the first thing she thought as well. And she especially would think this if she did not know that Snake could read minds and broadcast mentally, because ignorance of his telepathy removes the one other possible explanation of the coincidences. But, Urson, why did he leave the jewel with us before he went to see her?”

“Because he thought she was going to try and take it away from him.”

“Exactly. When she told me to send him up to her, I was fairly sure that was the main reason she wanted him. But if he was a spy, and knew how to work the jewel, then why not take it with him, present himself to Argo with the jewel, showing himself as an equal force, and then come calmly back, leaving her in silence and us still on his side, especially since he would be revealing to her something of which she was nine-tenths aware of already, and would watch him no more carefully than she would were it not confirmed.”

“All right,” said Urson, “why not?”

“Because he was not a spy, and didn’t know how to work the jewel. Yes, he had felt its power once. Perhaps he was going to pretend he had it hidden on his person. But he did not want her to get her hands on it for reasons that were strong, but not selfish.

“Here, Snake,” said Geo. “You know how to work the jewel now, don’t you; but you learned from Argo just now.”

The boy nodded.

“Here, then, why don’t you take it?” Geo lifted the jewel from his neck and held it out to him.

Snake drew back and shook his head violently.

Urson looked puzzled.

“Snake has seen into human minds, Urson. He’s seen things directly which the rest of us only learn from a sort of second hand observation. He knows that the power of this little bead is more dangerous to the mind of the person who wields it than it is to the cities it may destroy.”

“Well,” said Urson, “as long as she thinks he’s a spy, at least we’ll have one of them little beads and someone who knows how to use it. I mean if we have to.”

“I don’t think she thinks he’s a spy any more, Urson.”

“Huh?”

“I give her credit for being able to reason at least as well as I can. Once she found out he had no jewel on him, she knew that he was as innocent as you and I are. But her only thought was to get it in any way she could. When we came in, just when she was going to put Snake under the jewel’s control, guilt made her leap backwards to her first and seemingly logical accusation for our benefit. Evil likes to cloak itself as good.”

They stepped down into the forecastle. By now a handful of sailors had come into the room, mostly drunk and snoring on berths around the walls. One had wrapped himself completely up in a blanket in the middle berth of the tier that Urson had chosen for the three. “Well,” said Urson to Snake, “it looks like you’ll have to move.”

Snake scrambled to the top bunk.

“Now look, that one was mine.”

Snake motioned him up.

“Huh? Two of us in one of those?” demanded Urson. “Look, if you want someone to keep warm against, go down and sleep with Geo there. It’s more room and you won’t get squashed against the wall. I’m a thrasher when I sleep.”

Snake didn’t move.

“Maybe you better do what he says,” Geo said. “I have an idea that…”

“You’ve got another idea now?” asked Urson, “Oh, damn, I’m too tired to argue.” He vaulted up to the top bunk. “Now move over and be very small.” He stretched out, and Snake’s slight body was completely hidden. “Hey, get your elbows out of there,” Geo heard Urson mutter before there was only a gentle thundering of his snore.

* * * *

Silver mist suffused the deck of the ship and wet lines glowed a phosphorescent silver; the sky was pale as ice; pricks of stars dotted over the whole bowl. The sea, once green, seemed bleached to blowing clouds of white powder. The door of a cabin opened and white veils flung forward from the form of Argo who emerged like silver from the bone-colored door. The whole movement of the scene made it look like a picture imagination fastens in the slow ripplings of gauze under breeze. One dark spot was at her throat, pulsing darkly, like a heart, like a black flame. She walked to the railing, peered over. In the white washing a skeletal hand appeared. It raised on a beckoning arm, then fell forward in the water. Another arm raised now, a few feet away, beckoning, gesturing. Then three at once; then two more.

A voice as pale as the vision spoke “I am coming. We sail in a hour. The mate has been ordered to put the ship out before dawn. You must tell me now, creatures of the water.”

Two glowing arms raised up, and then an almost featureless face. Chest high in the water, it listed backwards and sank again.

“Are you of Aptor or Leptar?” spoke the apparitional figure of Argo again in the thinned voice. “Are your allegiances to Argo or Hama? I have followed thus far. You must tell me before I follow farther.”

There was a whirling of sound which seemed to be the wind attempting to say, “The sea…the sea…the sea…”

But Argo did not hear, for she turned away and walked from the rail, back to her cabin.

Now the scene moved, turned toward the door of the forecastle. It opened, moved through the hall, the walls, more like polished steel than weathered wood, and went on. In the forecastle, the yellow oil lamp seemed a white flaring of magnesium.

The movement stopped in front of a tier of three berths; on the bottom one lay a young man with a starved, pallid face. His mop of hair was bleached white. On his chest was a pulsing darkness, a black flame, a dark heart, shimmering with the indistinctness of absolute shadow. On the top bunk a great form like a bloated corpse lay. One huge arm hung over the bunk, flabbed, puffy, without muscle.

In the center berth was an anonymous bundle of blankets completely covering the figure inside. On this the scene fixed, drew closer…and the paleness suddenly faded before darkness, into shadow, into nothing.

* * * *

Geo sat up and knuckled his eyes.

The dark forecastle was relieved by the yellow glow of the lamp. The gaunt mate stood across the room. “Hey, you,” he was saying to a man in one of the bunks, “up and out. We’re sailing.”

The figure roused itself from the tangle of bedding.

The mate moved to another. “Up, you dog face. Up, you fish fodder. We’re sailing.” Turning around, he saw Geo watching him. “And what’s wrong with you?” he demanded. “We’re sailing, didn’t you hear? Naw, you go back to sleep. Your turn will come, but we need experienced ones now.” He grinned briefly, and then went on to one more. “Eh, you stink like an old wine cask. Raise yourself out of your fumes. We’re sailing!”