Farslayer's Story Read online

  They discussed, among other things, her history. In general it was rare for any mermaid to come back to this valley after having been sold away. Rare, but not unheard of. And in Black Pearl’s case, at least, no complaining purchaser had so far come looking for her. That had been known to happen in other cases in the past.

  Cosmo expressed his own quiet outrage over the whole situation, his own quiet determination to find a way by which the mermaid curse could be ended for good and all.

  Only then, when the mermaid had begun to feel fully at ease with him, did Cosmo’s magical tests begin.

  * * *

  Words were chanted, incense was burned. By the power of the young wizard invisible forces were gathered in the air of the grotto and then dispersed again. Black Pearl’s tail remained firmly in place, and she gave no sign of growing legs. The problem, said Cosmo, as he had expected from the beginning, was proving to be a difficult one, and a single session of course was not enough to develop a proper counterspell.

  Again and again, on that day of their first meeting, before Black Pearl swam away through the narrow tunnel, Cosmo pleaded and threatened and urged absolute secrecy upon her. He assured her again and again that his magical investigations, her hope of ever being cured, depended entirely upon that.

  Black Pearl kept the secret until their next session on the following day. Even her friendship with the mermaid Soft Ripple was not enough to induce her to talk about this, though she had the impression that Soft Ripple sensed that something in her had changed, and was trying to puzzle out what it was.

  And on the following day, during Black Pearl’s second visit to the secret grotto, in a pause for rest, Cosmo said to her: “You are a strange girl, I think, even for a mermaid. Perhaps it is because of the unhappy experience you had with that magician upstream.”

  “He was a much stronger magician than you are.”

  Cosmo did not appear to be upset by the comparison. “I don’t doubt it. I know that there are some whose powers exceed mine.”

  “But he was wicked, and I hated him from the start. And yes, I think that you are right, there has always been something out of the ordinary about me.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  The mermaid shrugged her ivory shoulders. “I don’t think my parents were even surprised when I became a mermaid. It happens only to about one of four girls, you know, in the villages. No one knows in advance which girls the curse will strike, but I don’t think anyone was surprised when it struck me.”

  “I admit that I have been intrigued by you, since I first saw you.” Suddenly the eyes of Cosmo blazed, so that it seemed remarkable that his voice could remain steady. “Have you kept the secret of our meetings? Even from the other mermaids who sometimes swim about with you?”

  “I have kept our secret,” she said softly.

  “See that you do. We have already progressed too far, much too dangerously far, for the secret to be revealed to anyone else.”

  * * *

  Another day, another meeting.

  Cosmo had been stroking with his fingers, making magical passes, across her shoulders and her hair. Then suddenly he let her go. “The aura, the touch, of his powers—I mean that one upstream—still clings about you.”

  Black Pearl shuddered slightly, through her whole body down to the tip of her scaly tail, as she lay exposed on the flat ledge of rock. “Then cleanse me of it, if you can.”

  “I will. I will, as much as possible. But still…”

  “Still what?”

  “I find it intriguing.”

  Her pink lips snarled at him. “You’ve said that before. His touch was evil!”

  “Oh, I agree, his was an evil magic, to be sure. But now it is gone. Only the flavor, the aura, the smell of it remains. Weak enough to be attractive. Like a pungent seasoning in food.”

  “If you can’t wash it away, don’t speak of it.”

  “Oh, I can wash some of it away at least. I am not totally incompetent, and there is much that I can do. But let us thank all the gods that the power of that evil wizard is gone. And I am sure that it was evil. I can sense the impression that it left on you as if you had been clamped tightly in some great, iron fist.”

  “Sometimes I think that I can still feel the pressure of that fist around me.”

  “No, the power of it is gone. But what I would learn of it are the shaping, the ingredients, that made it so powerful. So that my own magic, which is intended to do good, may be strengthened.”

  The mermaid, lying beside the little pool that was not much bigger than a bathtub, looked up at him doubtfully.

  Cosmo asked, almost pleading: “Does it seem to you that I am a bad man?”

  Despite the feelings she had begun to have for the magician, it took Black Pearl a long time to answer that. “No,” she said at last.

  “Then trust me. Will you trust me? It will be very hard for me to help you otherwise.”

  * * * * * *

  It was during that same meeting, only their third magical session in the hidden grotto, that Cosmo first slipped over Black Pearl’s head the fine chain that held the amulet. She held it up before her eyes and looked at it. The amulet was plain, almost crude, a little knot of glazed clay with symbols on it.

  Having put the little chain over her head, he hesitated. Then he said: “We are almost ready to make a serious attempt now; still I fear you are not ready.” But even as he spoke his great dark eyes were glowing their message of compassion, of love, into her eyes, into her heart.

  Cosmo moved a little closer, and with his right hand he brushed back Black Pearl’s long, black hair so that he could see more clearly into her eyes. Again he repeated another warning he had already given her several times.

  It was this: that the cure, even if against all odds it could be achieved this early in the course of treatment, could be no more than temporary at first.

  “However successful we are at this stage, you will revert to being a mermaid again, in less than a quarter of an hour—quite possibly much less. Such a temporary alleviation of the curse would be a first step only. But it would also be proof that eventually other steps are going to be possible. Strong evidence that in time we will find a way to cure you completely, permanently. You and all the mermaid sisterhood.”

  The mermaid nodded.

  His hand took her hand as she lay floating in the shallow water. And then, as he muttered incantations, his fingers began to stroke her hand, her arm, her shoulder.

  * * *

  And it was during that very treatment, what Cosmo had said would be the first serious attempt, that the miracle occurred for the first time.

  Black Pearl’s body, already awakened sensually by the magician’s caresses even before the change he wrought had come fully upon it—her body found itself suddenly, entirely human. Completely and wholly that of a woman. Utterly female.

  And Cosmo, responding to her sobs of joy with certain rather similiar sounds of his own, was right at her side when the change came. Right there to draw Black Pearl from the water, cradling her two lithe, gently kicking legs in his left arm, his right arm under her shoulders. There to swing her round with a swift motion of strong arms to the soft bed only two meters distant, where, as he said, he sometimes slept.

  A quarter of an hour later, when the expected return change overtook Black Pearl, her new lover, despite all of his cautions that such a relapse was bound to happen, looked disappointed. But not for long. And she, absorbed in her new happiness, accepted the situation, too.

  * * *

  The sessions of magic, lovemaking, and magic again, went on. There were many such sessions, one every few days, extending over several months. Sometimes the periods of two-legged normalcy were a little prolonged—once almost to half an hour—but still the final, permanent cure eluded the researcher and his patient lover.

  Each time Black Pearl swam into the grotto to meet him, Cosmo questioned her sternly as to whether she was continuing to keep their secret.
/>   “We are not so deeply into this that everything—your own fate as well as mine—depends upon your sharing the knowledge of what we do with no one. If you fail, the powers of magic will, I fear, doom you forever to keep your mermaid shape. Indeed—I have no wish to frighten you, my darling, but I must say this—they might warp you into something truly hideous.”

  So Black Pearl continued to keep the secret faithfully. She would have done anything, that the burning joy of her meetings with her lover might be made permanent.

  * * *

  Autumn was yielding to the onset of this land’s brief winter when a night came that changed everyone’s life. A riverboat, whose origin Black Pearl was never to discover, came plunging down the Tungri from upstream, hurtling through the series of rapids and cascades known as the Second Cataract. The passage was extremely difficult even in bright daylight, even for an experienced crew. In wind and rain and clouds and fading daylight, the crew of this ship probably never had a chance. The bits and pieces of their upriver craft that later washed ashore were of no familiar make.

  The riverboat might well have been in precipitous flight from someone or something. In any case it failed to make the passage, which only experienced boatmen who were favored by a measure of luck could ever hope to complete successfully. The craft was knocked to pieces upon the rocks within the gorge, with the loss of all hands so far as could be told.

  Most of the inhabitants of the valley, the many who lived on land and the few who dwelt in water, were not aware of the wreck until hours or days later. Black Pearl, because she had just left a secret rendezvous on Magicians’ Island, happened to be first to reach the scene of the disaster.

  And so it was she who discovered Farslayer, one of the Twelve Swords of power and legend, lying undamaged and uncorroded on the river bottom, where the smashing of the boat had dropped it, among the deep cold boiling wells of current just below the cataract. Only a mermaid or a dolphin could have reached it swimming.

  Whenever a wreck similar to this one occurred, which was not often, the mermaids as a rule came swarming round, trying to help the injured and save the drowning if they could, trying also to see what treasure and trinkets they might be able to salvage from the victims’ cargo.

  But here were no survivors or victims, living or dead, immediately visible. When Black Pearl first saw the Sword lying in the twilight of the river bottom, her first thought was for almost-forgotten Zoltan, because this impressive weapon so closely resembled one she’d seen him wear. She’d seen him use it too in her defense.

  Much additional memory that had been almost lost came rushing back. If Zoltan had indeed been in the wrecked boat, she’d save him if she could.

  Swimming and looking amid the watery thunder at the bottom of the falls, Black Pearl searched as only a mermaid could. She did indeed find one dead body, caught on the rocks nearby, but to her relief it was not Zoltan’s. One other man, who was still breathing when she found him, died even as Black Pearl was trying to decide how best to carry him to shore, died without saying a word in answer to her questions.

  No other survivors or casualties were discoverable at the site of the wreck. The mermaid thought to herself that there was no point in searching anymore, trying to look downriver for Zoltan; bodies and wreckage would be scattered for kilometers downstream already, and scattering farther every moment. Not even a mermaid would be able to find a single man, especially with nightfall coming on.

  Black Pearl gave up thoughts of rescue, and dove back to the Sword, which lay just where she had seen it last. There was barely enough daylight still penetrating the depths to let her mermaid’s vision find it once again.

  When she had brought the marvelous weapon to the surface, she could see that it was not, after all, the same Sword that Zoltan had carried. His, as she remembered, had borne the symbol of a small white dragon on its black hilt, where this one showed instead the concentric rings of a small white target.

  The young mermaid knew only a few fragments of the history of the Twelve Swords of Power. But she could see that this Sword, whatever its true nature, must be quite valuable.

  Zoltan dropped from her mind. Black Pearl’s next thought on having discovered this treasure was to take it straight to the man she loved.

  Cosmo would know what to do with her find. And if there were any benefits to be had from it, Cosmo, her true love, would see that those benefits were shared with her.

  Fortunately for her plan Cosmo had not yet left the grotto on Magicians’ Island; there was some magical tidying-up that had had to be attended to. He was surprised to see Black Pearl back so soon, and more than surprised to see what she was carrying.

  Balancing the naked Sword thoughtfully and carefully in both his hands—all magic aside, those edges, as he had already proved, were ready to cut tough leather as easily as water lilies—he agreed with her that it was probably hopeless to seek any further for survivors of the wreck tonight; tomorrow he would see to it that a party of fishermen went out from the villages on the Malolo side, to see if any might have been washed ashore alive.

  But his attention had never really left the Sword. “No, Pearl, I have never seen its like before.” He held the weapon in his hands up higher, the better to catch the light of his little lamp, and marveled at it. “But yes, I know what it is. Once there were eleven others like it in the world, and still there are probably nine.”

  “But what is it? Magic, surely.”

  “What is this one specifically? Magic such as you and I are never likely to see again. This one is Farslayer, as I can tell from the symbol on the hilt. Farslayer kills, at any distance and with absolute certainty. Hold it in your hands, and chant the name of your enemy, and swing the weapon round, and let it go—and lo! The Sword is gone to find your enemy, and he is dead. Even that evil one who once held you bound would not be able to stand against one of these. No power on earth could save him, I think—except perhaps one of the other Swords.”

  Black Pearl’s eyes were wide with wonder. “What are you going to do with it, then?”

  “Put it away in a place of safety, for now. Then I must think.” And the magician opened a small locker or safe, cut right into the stone beside their couch, a safe that Black Pearl had never known was there. And Cosmo put the Sword in there, and with a word of sealing magic closed it up.

  He frowned down at her as she lay in the water. “Not a word to anyone else, of course. Now there are two secrets you must keep, and this one is every bit—or almost—as big as the first.”

  “Of course. Not a word to anyone.” And joyously she saw in Cosmo’s eyes renewed evidence that she was trusted by him.

  Then another thought occurred to the mermaid. “When I was swimming back here just now, I thought I saw another boat, smaller than yours, coming toward the island.”

  “Oh? And from which shore?”

  “The north.”

  “That probably means Senones. Don’t worry. Even if they should dare to touch shore here, I’ve made this ground my home, and I can make myself invisible to enemies whilst I am on it.”

  “Are you sure?” The Senones clan and that to which Cosmo belonged were ancient enemies.

  “I’m sure. And now, besides, I have the Sword for my defense.” He smiled. “The wonderful Sword that you have brought me, and for which I am very grateful. And you must be very tired. Go and rest on the other island. Or back to the wreck and look for other trinkets if you like.” He seemed very loving and very confident. He added at last: “I love you, Pearl.”

  Black Pearl, delighted to the depths of her heart that she had been able to bring her lover such a prize, plunged obediently into the narrow tunnel and swam away.

  Chapter One

  Heavy wind filled the bleak and rugged gorge of the Tungri, dragging heavy clouds through dark night. The short winter of this land was not yet over, and the freezing rain that had been falling at sundown had turned to snow some hours ago. The hermit Gelimer was snug under blankets and skins in
his lonely bed, and when the half-intelligent watchbeast came to wake him he turned over with a faint groan and tried to pull the furs up over his head. Even before the hermit was fully awake, he knew what an awakening at this hour of such a night implied.

  But of course Gelimer’s conscience would not have allowed him to go back to sleep when he was needed on such a night, even had the anxious beast allowed it. Three breaths after he had tried to pull the covers up, the man was sitting on the edge of his simple cot, groping for the boots that ought to be just under the foot end.

  He had both of his eyes open now. “All right, what is it, Geelong?”

  The speechless animal, with melting sleet dripping from its fur, moved on four feet toward the single door of the one-room house, and back again. Its movement and the whole shape of its body suggested something between a large dog and a miniature bear. Geelong’s front paws, capable of clumsy gripping, came up in the air as the beast sat back on its haunches, and spread their digits as much as possible in the sign that the watchbeast usually employed to mean “man.”

  “All right, all right. I’m coming. So be it. I’m on my way.”

  The animal whined as if to urge the man to greater speed.

  As soon as his boots were on, Gelimer rose from his cot, a strongly built man of middle size and middle age. Only a fringe of once-luxuriant dark hair remained around a pate of shiny baldness. His bearded face in the fading firelight of his hut was shedding the last traces of sleep, putting on a look of innocent determination. “Ardneh willing, I’m on my way.” Now the hermit was groping his way into his outer garments, and then his heavy coat.

  He hooked a stubby battle hatchet to his belt—there were dangerous beasts to be encountered on the mountainside sometimes—and grabbed up the backpack, kept always in readiness, filled with items likely to be useful in the rescuing of stranded travelers.