Chapter 2

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.