City of Golden Shadow (72 page)

Paul gaped at nothing, staring into the near-darkness. He had trouble remembering things, but he felt quite certain he had never seen a body of water behave in that way before. In fact, he realized, it had been more than just the watercourse. The entire world had seemed to twist for a moment, to distort grossly, as though it were all painted on a single piece of paper, and that piece of paper had been violently crumpled.

"What . . . what was that?" Gally struggled for breath. "What happened?"

"I don't know. I . . . I think. . . ."

Even as he struggled for an explanation, the entire section of carving from which he and the boy hung ripped free from the side of the boat and they were suddenly floundering in open water. Paul grabbed for Gally, and when he had him safe, he helped him to the piece of carved trim, which was spinning slowly in the water a few yards away. The section that had broken off was longer than Paul was tall, and buoyant enough to give them something to cling to, which was just as well: the barge, ignorant of its lost stowaways, was swiftly pulling away down the watercourse. Within a few score of heartbeats it had disappeared into the mist and early morning darkness. They were alone again.

"Ssshhh," Paul told Gally, who was crying between watery coughs. The boy looked up at him with reddened eyes. "We'll be all right. See, we're just going to float here."

"No. I'm not . . . I . . . I was dreaming. I dreamed Bay was under the water, down on the sand at the bottom. He was lonely, see, and he wanted me to come down and play with him."

Paul squinted, trying to locate the shore: if it was close enough, they could swim, despite the quiet but steady drag of the current. But if the land was close enough to reach, it was hidden by mist and dim light. "Who did?" he asked, distracted.

"Bay. I dreamed about Bay."

"And who is that?"

Gally stared, wide-eyed. "My brother. You met him. Don't you remember?"

Paul could think of nothing to say.

They had clung to the bit of wreckage for some time. The sky had begun to lighten, but Paul was growing steadily more weary and feared he would not be able to hold onto the carving and Gally both for much longer. He was contemplating which direction he should choose for an all-or-nothing swim when a long shadow came slipping toward them through the mist.

It was a boat, not a large one like the ceremonial barge, but a modest fishing skiff. A single shape stood in the bow. As the boat drew closer, Paul saw that its occupant was one of the snouted creatures.

The creature backed water with its single long paddle so that the skiff stopped a few yards away from them. It crouched down in the bow and tipped its head to one side, examining them. Crooked fangs protruded from the long muzzle, but an undeniable intelligence gleamed in its yellow eyes. The sunlight showed Paul for the first time that the shiny skin was faintly greenish. After a moment, it stood and raised the paddle as though to strike them.

"Leave us alone!" Paul splashed frantically until he could put the bulk of the floating carving between them and the snouted thing.

The creature did not swing the paddle, but stood looking at them for a moment. Then it lowered the flat blade until it touched the water a few inches from Paul's hand. It lifted one of its own clawed, faintly froglike paws from the handle and made an unmistakable gesture-take it, take it.

Paul did not feel very trusting, but he also realized that holding one end of the paddle improved his defensive position enormously. He reached out and grabbed it. The creature began to draw the paddle back through the water, bracing itself in the bow so their weight would not overbalance it. When they were close enough, Paul lifted Gally into the small boat, then dragged himself over the side, keeping a close eye on their rescuer as he did so.

The creature said something in a voice that sounded more like duck-gabble than anything else. Paul stared, then shook his head. "We do not speak your language."

"What is he?" asked Gally. Paul shook his head again.

The stranger abruptly bent over and delved into a wide leather sack that lay in the bottom of the boat. Paul tensed and drew himself upright. The creature stood, its bright eyes and long face suggesting satisfaction, and held out its hands. In each was a length of leather thong with a large polished bead hung on it. The beads were creamily reflective, like silvery pearls. When Paul and Gally only stared, the creature bent and picked up a third beaded thong and tied it around its own neck, allowing the bead to rest in the hollow of its throat Paul thought he saw the bead shimmer for a moment, then change color, taking on something of the yellowy jade tinge of the creature's skin.

"Now you do it," the creature said. There was still a slight quack to its voice, but it was otherwise perfectly comprehensible. "Hurry, now-the sun will be up soon. We must not be caught on the Great Canal outside our appointed time."

Paul and Gally donned their thongs. The bead grew warm against Paul's throat. After a moment, it began to feel like a part of him.

"What are you called?" the creature asked them. "I am Klooroo of the Fisher People."

"I'm . . . I'm Paul. And this is Gally."

"And you are both of the Tellari."

"Tellari?"

"Certainly." Klooroo seemed very certain. "You are Tellari, just as I am Ullamari. Look at you! Look at me!"

Paul shrugged. There was no question that their rescuer was of a different sort than they were. "You said we are on . . . the Great Canal?"

Klooroo wrinkled his low, doglike brow. "Of course. Even Tellari should know that."

"We're . . . we have been in the water a long time."

"Ah. And you are not right in your heads." He nodded, satisfied. "Of course. Then you must come and be my guest until you can think properly again."

"Thank you. But . . . where are we?"

"What a strange question, Tellari. You are just outside the mighty city of Tuktubim, Shining Star of the Desert."

"But where is that? What country? Why are there two moons?"

Klooroo laughed. "When have there ever not been two moons? Even the humblest nimbor knows that is the difference between your world and mine."

"My . . . world?"

"You must have been badly injured, to be so foolish." He shook his head sadly. "You are on Ullamar, the fourth world from the sun. I think your people, in their ignorance, call it 'Mars.' "

"Why must we be off the canal before the sun comes up?"

Klooroo kept paddling as he answered, dipping and pulling on first one side of the skiff, then the other. "Because it is Festival Season, and during the dark hours the canal is forbidden to all except the barges of the priests. But a poor nimbor like me, if he has been unlucky in his fishing during the daylight, must sometimes take the risk if he does not wish to starve."

Paul sat up straight; Gally, who was slumped against his knee, protested sleepily. "So it was some kind of religious ritual. We climbed ashore onto an island and then later a boat landed there. They had a woman with them, a dark-haired woman with . . . with wings, as strange as that sounds. Is there any way to find out who she is?"

The bank of the canal was at last coming into view. Paul stared at the ghostly collection of huts slowly appearing through the mist, waiting, but Klooroo did not answer. When he looked up, the self-named nimbor was staring at him in horror.

"What? Have I said something wrong?"

"You . . . you have looked on the Summer Princess? And the taltors did not slay you?"

Paul shook his head. "If you mean the soldiers, we hid from them." Bemused by the creature's reaction, he told Klooroo how they had stolen a ride on the barge. ". . . And that is why we were floating in the water where you found us. What have we done that is so terrible?"

Klooroo made several hand gestures which seemed meant to ward off evil. "Only a Tellari, and a mad one at that, would ask such a question. Why do you think the canal is forbidden to anyone below the taltor class during Festival Season? So lowly ones do not look on the Summer Princess and bring bad luck on the Festival's rituals. If the rituals fail, the canals will not flood next season and all the land will remain a desert!"

A faint memory, really a reflex, suggested to Paul that once he would have found such a belief ridiculous, but recalling as little as he did of his own past and immersed in such a strange present, he found it difficult to say that anything was ridiculous. He shrugged. "I'm sorry. We didn't know anything. I was only trying to save the boy and myself."

Klooroo looked down at slumbering Gally and the grim set of his long muzzle softened a bit. "Yes, but. . . ." He blinked, then looked up at Paul. "I suppose you could not know. Perhaps since you are off-worlders, it will not disturb the ritual."

Paul decided not to mention their gleeful consumption of the temple offerings. "Who is she, this Summer Princess? And why do you know so much about . . . Tellari? Are people like us common here?"

"Not here-not in the nimbor towns. But there are more than a few in Tuktubim, although mostly they stay in the Soombar's palace, and a few mad ones roam in the outer deserts, looking for only the gods know what. There are occasionally visitors from Vonar as well-the second planet. But they almost never come outside the rainy season."

Klooroo was nosing his skiff through an array of small docks that formed a set of channels along the canal's bank. Many of the huts were built directly on the docks; others, grouped together between the canal and a rising cliff wall, rose in high, ramshackle agglomerations. Most of Klooroo's neighbors seemed to be awake and moving, some preparing their boats to go out onto the canal, but others just as clearly bringing theirs back in from a night of forbidden foraging.

"But how about the woman?" Paul asked, "You called her a princess?"

"The princess. The Summer Princess." He turned down one of the waterways, and Paul's wide view was suddenly blocked by looming walls. "She is one of the Vonari, the Blue People with Wings. Long ago, we conquered them, and every year they send one of their noblewomen as tribute."

"Tribute? What does that mean? She has to marry the . . . what did you call him? The Soombar?"

"After a fashion." Klooroo used the long paddle to turn them again, this time through a small Watergate into a small enclosed pool surrounded by flimsy wooden walls. He brought the skiff alongside an open doorway, then reached out his long, clawed hand and pulled out a rope, which he tied to a loop in the skiff's bow. "After a fashion," he repeated, "since the Soombar is the descendant of gods. What she does is marry the gods themselves. At the end of the Festival she is killed and her body is given to the waters so that the rains will come back."

Klooroo stepped out of the boat into the doorway, then turned back and reached his hand to Paul.

"Your face looks very strange-is your head hurting? All the more reason, then, that you and the child should come and guest with me."

The sun was strong in the middle of the day. At this moment, Klooroo was perhaps the only adult resident of Nimbortown not hidden indoors and protected from its rays. He stayed as much in shade as he could, huddling beneath the overhang of the neighboring building while his Tellari guest sat in the middle of the fish-skin roof reveling in the heat, doing his best to drive away the bone-deep chill of his long immersion. Below, Gally was working off his meal of soup and flatbread in an exuberant game of tag with some of the local children.

"In this way you are mad, too," Klooroo complained. "Can we not go inside? Much more of this bitter sun and I will be as unbalanced as you."

"Of course." Paul stood and followed his host back down the ladder into the shack. "I wasn't . . . I was thinking." He sat himself in the corner of the unfurnished room. "Is there nothing that can be done? You said there are others of her people here. Won't they do anything?"

"Pfaugh." Klooroo shook his long-muzzled head in disgust. "You are still thinking about her? Have you not blasphemed enough by looking at that which should not be seen? As for the Vonari, they honor their ancient treaty. Three hundred Summer Princesses at least have been offered before her-why should they balk at one more?"

"But she's. . . ." Paul rubbed his face, as though the pressure could drive the haunting memories from his head."I know her. I know her damn it! But I don't remember how."

"You do not know her." The nimbor was firm. "Only the taltors are allowed to see her. Off-worlders and humble folk like me-never."

"Well, I managed to see her last night, even if it was by accident. Maybe I saw her somewhere else as well, and just can't remember where." He looked up quickly as Gally shrieked outside, but it was a shout of pleasure, not fear. The boy seemed quite at ease with his new nimbor friends; if he was still grieving for the murdered Oysterhouse children, he did not show it. "My memory-there's something wrong with it, but I don't think it's recent," Paul said suddenly. "I think there's been a problem for some time."

"Perhaps you did spy on the Summer Princess before, and the gods have punished you. Or perhaps you have some illness or are under some curse. I do not know enough about Tellari to say." Klooroo frowned. "You should speak to some of your own people."

Paul turned. "Do you know some?"

"Have I friends among the Tellari? No." Klooroo stood, his knobby joints crackling. "But there will doubtless be off-worlders at the market in Tuktubim during this Festival Season. If you like, I will take you there. First I must find you some shoes-the boy, too. You will burn your feet like a badly cooked meal, otherwise."

"I would like to go the market, and to see Tuktubim. You said that is where the Summer Princess is kept, too?"

Klooroo lowered his head and snarled. For a moment he looked quite canine. "Gods! Is there no end to your madness? Forget her!"

Paul frowned. "I can't. But I will try not to speak of it in front of you."

"Or behind me. Or on my left side or on my right. Call the boy, Tellar-man. I have no family, so there is nothing to prevent us going now-ha! Such freedom is one of the small benefits of being nestless." He said it with a certain sadness, and Paul realized with a little shame that despite all Klooroo's kindness and hospitality, they had not shown much interest in his life. Born into the Martian underclass, kept in serflike conditions by the taltor nobility, Klooroo could not have had a very happy time of it.