Short Fiction, Poul Anderson [simple e reader .TXT] 📗

a joss in his cabin and got his position in dreams from it. Only had one wreck in his life.” Imazu grinned. “Of course, he drowned then.”

“Look,” said Corun suddenly, “do you know where the hell we’re going, and why?”

“To the Sea of Demons is all they told me. No reason given.” Imazu studied Corun with his sharp black eye. “You don’t know either, eh? I’ve a notion that most of us won’t live to find out.”

“I’m surprised that any crew could be made to go there without a mutiny.”

“This gang of bully boys is only frightened of Shorzon and his witch granddaughter. They⁠—” Imazu shut up. Looking around, Corun saw the two approaching.

In the morning light, Chryseis did not seem the luring devil-woman of the night. She moved with easy grace across the rolling deck, the wind blowing her tunic and her long black hair in careless billows, and there was a girlish joy and eagerness in her. The pirate’s heart stumbled and began to race.

She chattered gaily of nothing while she and the old man ate. Shorzon remained silent until he was through, then said curtly to the two men: “Come into the cabin with us.”

They filled Corun’s tiny room, sitting on bunk and floor. Shorzon said slowly, “We may as well begin now to learn what you know, Corun. What is the truth about your voyage to the Xanthi?”

“It was several seasons ago,” replied the corsair. “I got the thought you seem to have had, that possibly I could enlist their help against my enemies.” He smiled mirthlessly. “I learned better.”

“What do we know of them, exactly?” said Shorzon methodically. He ticked the points off on his lean fingers. “They are an amphibious nonhuman race dwelling in the Sea of Demons, which is said to grow grass so that ships become tangled there and never escape.”

“Not so,” said Corun. “There’s kelp on the surface, but you can sail right through it. I think the Sea is just a dead region of water around which the great ocean currents move.”

“I know,” said Shorzon impatiently, and resumed his summary: “Generations ago, the Xanthi, of whose presence men had only been vaguely aware before, fell upon all the islands in their sea and slew the people living there. They had great numbers, as well as tamed sea monsters and unknown powers of sorcery, so that no one could stand against them. Since then, they have not gone beyond their borders, but they ruthlessly destroy all human vessels venturing inside. King Phidion III of Achaera sent a great fleet to drive the Xanthi from their stolen territory. Not one ship returned. Men now shun the whole region as one accursed.”

Imazu nodded. “There’s a sailor’s legend that the souls of the damned go to the Xanthi,” he offered.

Shorzon gave him an exasperated look. “I’m only interested in facts,” he said coldly. “What do you know, Corun?”

“I know what you just said, as who doesn’t?” answered the Conahurian. “But I think they must have limits to their powers, and be reasonable creatures⁠—but the limits are far beyond man’s, and their reason is not as ours.

“I didn’t try an invasion, of course. I took one small fast boat manned with picked volunteers and waited outside the Sea for a storm that would blow me into it. When that came, we ran before it⁠—fast! In the rain and wind and waves, I figured we could get undetected far into their borders. So, it seemed, we could, and in fact we made it almost to the largest island inside. Then they came at us.

“They were riding cetaraea, and driving sea serpents before them. They had spears and bows and swords, and there were hundreds of them. Any one of the snakes could have smashed our boat. We ran for land and barely made it.

“We hadn’t come to fight, so we held up our hands as the Xanthi leaped ashore and wondered if they’d just hack us down. But, as I’d hoped, they wanted to know what we were there for. So they took us to the black castle on the island.”

Momentarily Corun was cold as the memory of that wet dark place of evil shuddered through his mind. “I can’t tell you much about it. They have great powers of sorcery, and the place seemed somehow unreal, never the same⁠—always wrong, always with something horrible just beyond vision in the shadows. I remember the whole time as if it were a dream. There were treasures beyond counting. I saw gold and jewels from the sea bottom, mixed in with human skulls and the figureheads of drowned ships. The light was dim and blue, and there was always fog, and noises for which we had no name hooting out in the gloom. It stank, with the vile fishy smell they have. And the walls seemed to have a watery unreality, as I said, shifting and fading like smoke. You could smell sorcery in the very air of that place.

“They kept us there for many ten-days. We’d brought rich gifts, of course, which they accepted ungraciously, and they housed us in a dungeon under guard. They didn’t feed us so badly, if you like a steady fish diet. And they taught us their language.”

“How does it sound?” asked Chryseis.

“I can’t make it come out right. No human throat can. Something like this⁠—” They stiffened at the chill hissing that slithered from Corun’s lips. “It has words for things I never did understand, and it lacks many of the commonest human words⁠—fear, joy, hope, adventure⁠—” His glance slid to Chryseis⁠—“love⁠—”

“Do they have a word for hate?” asked Shorzon.

“Oh, yes,” Corun grinned without humor. After a moment he went on: “They wanted to know more of the outside world. That was why they spared our lives. When we knew the language well enough, they began to question us. How they questioned us! It got to be torture, those unending days of answering the things that hissed and