The Fourth Book Of Lost Swords : Farslayer's Story (Saberhagen's Lost Swords 4), Fred Saberhagen [100 best novels of all time TXT] 📗

with great difficulty to make headway against a roaring and shallow rush of water. With hands and fins and tail she labored to ascend the rocky bed of a small stream.

      This particular stream, much faster than the creek Zoltan had followed on his way to meet her, came gushing down the mountain through a narrow little canyon in the south side of the river gorge. The mouth of this brook, where it poured into the Tungri, was less than a kilometer from the hermit’s house high on the irregular slope above. That house was still invisible from the place where the young mermaid squirmed and struggled.

      On this spring day the little stream had been augmented by melting snow in the high country, yet still there were stretches in which its depth was insufficient to keep afloat a swimming creature of the mermaid’s size. Black Pearl, in the form to which she had been condemned by enchantment, was only a little smaller than she would have been as a young woman with two legs.

      Even this close to the stream’s mouth she had already encountered an especially difficult spot. Here, where the water spread out into a mere corrugated sheet stretched over a rocky bed, it was impossible for any creature of her size to swim. Pausing in her efforts, lying on her side in the rushing shallows, she reached for the amulet that hung from a thin chain about her neck, and muttered a few soft words.

      Almost unwillingly Black Pearl had memorized the words of the spell, after hearing Cosmo recite it countless times in the secret grotto. Perhaps he would be surprised, she thought now, to see that his magic worked for her alone almost as well as it had ever worked for him. Perhaps he would be surprised to know that it worked away from the grotto as well.

      Immediately the spell had its effect. In a puff of watery mist her mermaid tail was gone, replaced by pale but very human-looking hips and legs. Shakily Black Pearl stood up, nakedly vulnerable now to the cold water and completely human. A young woman’s body, perfectly normal in appearance, poised now upon two bare and very human feet.

      Stepping carefully and with difficulty, yet trying to make the best speed she could, she walked forward over the rough rocks, muttering prayers to all the gods that she had ever heard of.

      Barely had Black Pearl reached the next deep pool upstream before the strength of the spell she had just recited collapsed under the burden of the greater magic it labored to counteract. The forces that had for the space of a few breaths maintained her body in a normal human form abruptly dissipated. In an instant, metamorphosis reversed itself. Feet and legs were returned in the twinkling of an eye into the fishtail that she had worn for the past five years, since the age of twelve. She fell with a great splash.

      But still she was able to make progress. Here, and upstream for some distance she had yet to discover, there ran a channel deep enough to support her finned body as she swam. Once more she could fight the current with her fins and tail—until she reached the next stretch where the channel disappeared.

      Several times during the next few minutes of the mermaid’s upstream struggle she was forced to use the secret counterspell and amulet. The trouble was that the effect of the counterspell faded rapidly with frequent repetition. The time Black Pearl was able to spend in fully human form was limited to a few minutes at most with each use of the amulet, and the power had to be carefully husbanded. Only rarely and infrequently could she escape the deforming impact of accursed Senones magic, and regain for a heartbreakingly small time the shape that would have been hers in normal life. And each interval of relief cost her more and more in psychic effort to achieve. It would be necessary to let the power in the amulet lie fallow for days, weeks, or even months before the maximum, comparatively long periods of full humanity could be attained once more. She had husbanded the power for many days before attempting this ascent, where she expected that it would be needed in its fullest form.

      She was determined to tell her secrets to someone, and it certainly would not be those slave dealers on the north side of the river. Nor would it, could it, be Zoltan. Never that.

      Months ago, Cosmo, lying with Black Pearl in the secret grotto upon a bed of moss and furs, with his own gift of her true woman’s legs clasped round him, had murmured into her ear again and again that the secrecy was part of the spell. That if she revealed the magical power of changing to another living soul, that power might be taken from her, beyond even his wizard’s power to restore it.

      At that time Black Pearl had assured her lover fiercely that she would never tell. And until now she had kept the secret safe, though several times she had come close to telling Soft Ripple everything.

      But today she intended to tell someone. Her confidant would not be her only real friend, Soft Ripple. Because Soft Ripple could be of no help to her, and Black Pearl desperately needed help. The secret had developed a monstrous complication.

      In the intervals when Black Pearl could use her tail and swim, her progress upstream was swift. But now already she was entering yet another stretch of the stream where the water grew too shallow for swimming. A few moments later Black Pearl was on her magically restored feet again and walking. This time, while the change to normalcy still held, she took a moment to look down at herself, studying fearfully the near-flatness of her woman’s belly, pale and goose-bumped now with cold.

      So far the enlargement was minimal, almost undetectable. But she was more firmly convinced than ever before that she was pregnant.

      Cosmo