The Brides of Maracoor, page 21
“And what did you do, Porox, when the marauders arrived? How did you behave?”
“No business of yours. But I can’t chastise you as you deserve; we need to get your briefing.” A side door opened and an underling passed along a written message. “Ah. I see. You are to proceed to the Court. Please follow this page.”
“I’ll bring my son with me.”
“So out of order that I can hardly bring myself to reply.”
“I won’t speak to anyone without keeping him by my side. You can lock me up for that if you must.”
The Court was waiting, so Porox capitulated. Leorix leapt to his feet. Father and son were led up a grand staircase that Lucikles had been permitted to mount only two or three times before in his career in the Courts of the Adjutants.
He felt his face pale and his center of gravity pivot like a wobbling top as the page led them past the great double doors of the Adjutants’ Hall to a black onyx door, smaller and off-center. It was surrounded with a decorative frieze of silver laurel leaves. The salon reserved for the Bvasil himself, should he be in the building. “Oh, Leorix.” Lucikles squeezed his son’s hand. “Unless I am mistaken, you may be about to have an encounter vouchsafed to very few of us.” He brushed the dust of travel and sleep off the shoulders of the boy’s tunic. “Straighten your spine. Remember that you asked for this.”
“I didn’t ask,” Leorix reminded him. “I told you I was coming.”
The page opened the door and led them through a dark vestibule that opened into a higher room. Windows with stone mullions ran below the ceiling on all four sides of the room. Beneath them, between pale beige stone pilasters, the vertical panels of wall were upholstered in royal velvet, now blue, now violet, now nearly plum red. Across them, the whole length of the room, a banner of saffron gold hung from regular pairs of poles lodged in clay pots filled with sand. A table of gilded oak stood across from the doorway. Behind it, on a chair with tasseled gold cushions, the Great Mara—the Bvasil himself—straightened from a lounging position and lifted his double chins at them. He was newly shaved and a spot of blood still glistened at the side of his mouth like a ruby.
“Lucikles, lately returned from his annual review of the Ephrarxis Isles and the Hyperastrich Archipelago,” intoned the page, and withdrew.
The Bvasil—the Great Mara of Maracoor, in human form for this generation, which tended to a little pudge—leaned on his forearms and squinted. “The light is dreadful in here. It’s all to impress guests, but at this hour highly impractical. We can’t make you out at all. Come nearer. Is that a boy or a girl? Heavens, a child in any case. Save us. Are you lost, child? Don’t answer. Stand there. No, that’s too close, back up. Yes. That’ll do.”
Lucikles and Leorix positioned themselves as directed and waited. The Great Mara was an ordinary-looking round man with a lopsided quiff upon his head, raked forward from what remained of his grey thatch. On his desk to one side, cast there as if it scratched, a wreath of bronzed laurel leaves and berries of pearl and jet. “State your name and briefly deliver your report. We haven’t patience for niceties.” From the shadows in one corner a scribe emerged with a codex, a quill, and a pot of ink. The scribe sat on a bench to one side and poised his pen to take dictation.
Lucikles cleared his throat. He was so shocked at an audience with the Great Mara that he could scarcely recall the proper form of address. “Your Beneficent Servant—I am Lucikles—second born of the House of Korayus.”
“You’re the beneficent servant. Get your facts straight. We are Your Magnificence. We mean, when you address us, we are, we’re not your magnificence. In any sense. Heaven forfend. We wouldn’t know where to begin.” He rolled his eyes at the scribe. “We can see this is going to be a bit of a damp diaper, as proceedings go. Forgo with the niceties, man—Lucikles, was it—and tell us what we need to know.”
“Accustomed as I am to delivering my report to the Courts of the Adjutants, I scarcely know the form in whi—”
“Stop sputtering. Tell us what’s going on in Maracoor Spot, you fool.”
Lucikles didn’t like being called a fool in front of his son, even if the speaker was divine on his mother’s side—his mother having declared herself divine about forty minutes before she expired in an apoplectic convulsion of self-admiration. “I first present my son. This is Leorix Korayus.”
The boy nodded with the terse self-control of a civil servant three decades in the administration. He’ll go far, if he survives this madness, thought his father.
Gathering his strength, Lucikles plunged ahead.
“Your Magnificence, if you please. There’s concern about an aberration to custom in the sacred habits of the brides of Maracoor. What I know about it is scant indeed. From some unknown origin, a young woman, really scarcely out of childhood, arrived on the shores of Maracoor Spot shortly before our annual inspection. She was accompanied by a talking Goose.”
“We’ve heard tell of such things, but we never really believed it,” said the Great Mara. “Well, we take so much on faith. We can scarcely fathom that human beings manage to string eight words together into a coherent thought. They look so idiotic, most of them. Go on. You met these creatures? This girl, this Goose?”
“I did. The brides made an effort to hide her from me, but I saw through their bluff.” This was overstating the fact a little, but the Great Mara didn’t seem to notice. Or mind.
“You were late in arriving on Maracoor Spot, we understand. We mean relative to your other ports of call.”
“I was. There was a week of tremendous weather. Unprecedented winds from the southeast. We nearly turned back, but we feared the repercussions if we had been charged with abandoning our mission.”
“That weather, too vexing. We lost an entire flock of singing pigeons, the ones we train for holy days. They went up in a vortex, their little throats raised in harmonic terror, and that was the end of them. At least so far. We live in hope for the miracle of their return. The sweeties. Also we were invaded, did you hear? But we digress. We want to know in what ways the green apparition has upset the regular practices of the brides of Maracoor. Their regimen is strictly dictated by long decades of sacred orthopraxy, so the introduction of a foreign body to their number can’t have been met with cries of joy.”
“It’s hard for me to comment. I visit Maracoor Spot at best twice a year—Your—Your Divine Magnificence.” The addition of the adjective was inspired; the Great Mara simpered a little, and relaxed against his cushions. What a belly on the fellow. Lucikles said, “I can come to no conclusion. It’s for minds wiser than mine to interpret fate.”
“And you just left her there, diddling away and making trouble?”
“I had no license to remove her.”
The Great Mara puckered his lower lip and made a sucking noise. “Has it occurred to you that this creature and the navy that invaded our capital city were borne, perhaps, by the same great storm?”
Oh, it had, it so had, but Lucikles kept his mouth shut.
The Great Mara spoke as if he was musing aloud. “There are reports of mad upheavals inland and coastal. The heavens are disturbed and the earth responds in aberration and cunning. The great lizard of the chalk slides, you know the one?—it emerged from its slumber, did you hear that? It sloughed itself down the coast and ate a village and a half and then burped and returned to its lair. People had forgotten to take it for real, it hadn’t happened in so long.”
This accorded with the several strange sensations Lucikles had had himself—like that of Relexis Kee manifesting himself bodily upon the trunk of a dead tree and giving travel advice.
“And upon Lesser Torn Isle, we’re reliably informed, a small coterie of winged simians made landfall, having come from some unknown island across the sea to the far east. They claimed to be looking for someone named Rain. No one on Lesser Torn Isle knew of your having found a green child on Maracoor Spot, so they directed the monkeys to the mainland. The creatures haven’t shown up yet in the capital city. We don’t know if they made landfall on the mainland or if they aborted their mission and returned to their primitive unknown home. We don’t know; we can’t really see the details. It would take the very Oracle of Maracoor, no less, to tell us what all this nonsense means. But we hope those monkey-birds don’t come here. They sound spooky.
“In short,” said the Great Mara, “this disaster of our time, in its multiple varieties, seems to be centering upon the appearance of this importunate visitor to our shores. So we’re directing you to return to Maracoor Spot. Remove the offending article before more of our history becomes unhinged. Bring the green girl here so she may be questioned. The galleon in which you just returned is at the slip, waiting with crew and captain to take you out again. Goodbye, heave-ho and all that natter. I’ll have a few grapes and, perhaps, some meats of walnut?” he told his scribe.
“May I go?” asked Leorix. The boldness of the boy!
“You must go; I’ve had quite enough of children.”
By that final exchange Leorix claimed authority to join his father on board the Pious Enterprise. Lucikles couldn’t deny that “You must go” could be interpreted as a sacred order for Leorix to accompany his father to Maracoor Spot, even if more likely it had meant “Get lost.” In any case, there wasn’t any time to return Leorix to the safe hold of Oena and her mother in the upland farm. After receiving further muttered instructions from Porox on the other confidential aims of the next mission, Lucikles hurried away. The ship was to sail at sundown.
Father and son scarcely had time to return to the house in Piney Quarter. They scrabbled for clean changes of clothes. As instructed, Leorix tried to assemble some niceties of food to vary the tedious shipboard fare. Cur leapt about at the commotion. Lucikles dug out a few more coins hidden in the underfloor safe. On their way to board the ship, they flung a silver tribute into the coffers of the Temple Houranos for safe passage.
With Captain Gargios Nitexos at the helm, fuming at the assignment he had no permission to decline, they set sail. The boy stood at the rail, watching dwindle the only world he’d known. The eastern sky was shutting down, the western glazed with hysterical sunset. But more lights showed from chinks in the shutters of Maracoor Crown than Lucikles would have imagined. Dozens, perhaps hundreds—apparently quite a few people had chosen not to flee, but had hunkered down and hidden in their attics and storeholds. Or had returned after only a brief absence. He felt proud of them, though he guessed their presence was as much greed as it was patriotism.
Still, the city lights upon the harbor seemed brave. Three hundred separate tiny lighthouses.
The boy was too thrilled to go below-decks. Or maybe he was timid of the rough crew. He was still an innocent in every way, his Leorix. Near the prow of the ship Lucikles stayed with him, each of them looking in a different direction. The wind was fair. Once they’d cleared the harbor the run promised to be smooth, at least initially. A little light chop, but refreshing. Leorix laughed as the spume reached up and felt his face.
Circulating the deck, the Captain joined them for a few moments. He wasn’t happy at being sent out again so soon, though it was cash in his wallet. The Pious Enterprise was due for some overhauling below waterline, and needed to spend several weeks in dry dock. But Nitexos didn’t foresee problems, provided the weather was cooperative. A straight haul to Maracoor Spot and back could be accomplished in less than two weeks, assuming no trouble.
“I went up the ratlines to study the sky before the full night set in,” he said to Lucikles. “Pittance to the gods for a safe journey. I thought I saw an underwater escort on both sides of us, for a bit.”
“Dolphins?” Not impossible this close in, but rare. “Surely—you don’t mean a whale pod?”
“It was hard to tell. Too deep. But movement, shadow, keeping pace with us to either board, for sure.”
Lucikles glanced into the depths; it was too dark now to see much but the light from portholes below-decks puddling in oily yellowness on the surface of the water. “I was inattentive.”
“I thought I saw something, too,” said Leorix. “Earlier I mean.”
“What did it look like?” asked Gargios.
“Oh,” said the boy thoughtfully. “Nixies?”
“Looked like nixies, or were they?” pressed the captain.
“Well, I never saw a nixie before, so I don’t know.” How easily the boy seemed to possess his ignorance. It was like a coat he hadn’t outgrown.
“First night at sea, fancy strikes,” said his father, ruffling Leorix’s hair.
“I’ll teach you to scale to the crow’s nest tomorrow, lad,” said the Captain. “Catch some sleep. If the men get too crude, have a word with me, Lucikles. They’re not used to juvenile company on board.”
2
The days settled into a new pattern. Rain found herself wary of the hearth, unhappy to recall the spectre of the dyani even if it had been largely a figment of her exhaustion. For her part, Helia seemed to have taken up a permanent post over the coals. She abandoned the fire only during the morning rituals and for meals and sleep and to visit the privy. She kept a pot of water at the ready and a poker across her lap, as if for defense. “Do you intend to read the ashes of our dinner fire?” asked Kliompte once, approaching with a broom and pan to give the hearthstones a good going over. “If so, do it now and let me get to my housework.”
“I don’t need to read ashes to know what ashes say,” replied the old woman, but she seemed troubled. She chased Kliompte away and told her to go pickle some radishes if she needed a chore.
Not far away, Rain and Cossy were settled upon a rag carpet, playing a game of sticks. Scyrilla hovered near, wanting to be involved, but Cossy kept turning her shoulder.
“I’ll play the winner,” said Scyrilla.
“We’re busy,” said Cossy.
“We can do two against one, I’ll be the one, I don’t mind. I don’t even mind losing.” Scyrilla was magnificently insincere. “I like it.”
“Go away.”
Rain said, “We can figure out a way for three to play, can’t we?” but Cossy threw her such a look of contempt that the green visitor fell silent.
“You can help me slice the radishes if you want,” called Kliompte.
“No, I’m going to read the ashes,” said Scyrilla. “Why not.”
“Get away, you’re not wanted here,” scolded Helia, but she had dropped her poker on the floor and she couldn’t bend to reach it and ward off Scyrilla.
Scyrilla knelt at the threshold of the hearth and leaned down. Her chin was at the level of the andirons. In a self-satisfied singsong she chanted:
Fire of fate in the filthy grate,
Tell us what’s wrong before it’s too late.
“You fool, you idiot,” cried Helia, trying to kick the girl. Scyrilla blew very faintly on the dead fire. The embers glowed and winked red, but no dyani appeared. The ash merely rose in a low puff, and fell down again upon the flat stone.
“Now I will tell you what I see,” said Scyrilla. The room had gone still—Rain and Cossy poised over their sticks, Kliompte paused with a paring knife in her hand, and the others looking up from their evening occupations. Even Helia seemed paralyzed. Scyrilla wasn’t used to commanding attention. She mused over the pattern in the ash. Finally she straightened her spine and sat back on her haunches. “I’m not too good at this,” she said in an ordinary voice. Staring at Rain she continued, almost ruefully, “But I think you’re trouble. You’re big trouble.”
Rain felt a chill flush her from forehead to shins. “You’re a silly girl.”
“Probably I am,” said Scyrilla. “Even so.”
“What did you see?” asked Helia in a low voice, more terrified than menacing, but Scyrilla would say no more. She’d improved her standing enough not to want to jeopardize it, mystery being a more alluring perfume than clarity.
That night Rain woke up but, afraid of encountering Helia again, she lay on the pillow with her eyes squinched closed. A splash of longing was muscling through her somehow. She was missing something dreadfully without being able to name it. Perhaps it was like wanting to have a child, she wondered, but this was more precise. It wasn’t mere loneliness; it was thwarted affection. She was missing someone she had once known and could no longer remember.
Tell me what’s wrong before it’s too late, she found herself praying.
3
If the Pious Enterprise really had an underwater escort, either beneficent or malicious, Lucikles never saw it. But the ship made such swift passage through the southern sea that he couldn’t help entertaining that notion.
Leorix stuck close by his father’s side until he could no longer stand. He then soldiered through his bout of sickness in his hammock as the waters roughened. And the boy was still recovering from the attack of the wolf, after all. He swayed, pale and quiet, not even kicking his limbs. Lucikles thought that if his son should suffer and die at sea, that would be the end of his own marriage for sure. But this was an unnecessary worry, for Lucikles himself would have already died of grief.
Still, as they breasted the coastal current and set across stiller waters for Maracoor Spot, the boy began to revive. After he spent a few afternoons under a blanket on deck, color returned to his cheeks and brow. The crew hadn’t wanted a simpering child on board but had grown to consider him a mascot. They shared with him their daily portion of citrus and the occasional horehound sweet.
On a day of broad clarity, the type of day where the blue at zenith looked nearly black and at the horizon pale as thinned milk, Maracoor Spot came into view. Leorix shouted with excitement and ran back and forth to tell everyone. Cur yapped at the commotion, too, as if he could smell fresh hunting in the wind.
“We’ll drop anchor as usual and proceed tomorrow morning in the longboat,” Captain Nitexos informed him.
