The Island Under the Earth Read Free

water trickled away.
    There was a silence. “Well,” said merchant Tabnath Lo, “you have had your readings and your warnings.” A very, very slight note of a something between amusement and scorn still sounded in his voice. “
I
do not urge you to go.” The bosun looked up from the runnel of dirty water, one finger absently musing upon the scar of a kraken-claw along his cheek. He looked at merchant, looked at master, a somewhat brighter expression coming across his seamed and sun-scoured face.
    But Captain Stag, with a flush of rage striking all along his countenance, brows compressed, eyes hottened, nostrils widened, mouth a-snarl, then going swift away, like lightning flash — Captain Stag said, “Onward.” One look as red as fire he gave to the owner of the packtrain: this one instantly chicked his tongue and smacked his lead-beast. The line moved on at once, the onagerer swung himself onto the lead-onager, captain and bosun followed alongside. The augur nodded and gave a dismissing gesture. His fingers felt his scrip where his fee reposed. The merchant opened his mouth, then he shrugged, said nothing.
    In her litter, the captain’s woman was silent. She said nothing, she looked nothing. She had prayed, she had shrieked, wept, pleaded … all in the past. Now she silently endured a securer present, did nothing to invoke the hastening onrush of a future which might be worse.

Chapter Two
    A league along the coastal road stood (or lay) the ruins of The Old Queen’s Tower: that is, they were not precisely along the road, but in the fork of a Y formed by the road’s division — one following the out-thrust of the land, the other heading in and away and up, league after league after hundredleague, until (so it was said) it reached The Heartlands, and all that was there.
    “What do you stop for?” Stag snapped, speaking for the first time. The onagerer squinted, rubbed his bristly jowls and knobby chin, cleared his throat.
    “Trying to think…. Wasn’t nothing in the augur-speech — was there? — warning us to ‘ware of the Old Queen’s Tower — ”
    “No! Get on with it.”
    The man laughed, uneasy, but determined to have his say. “It just come to me … maybe … The Old Queen … and — and that something about …” He hesitated, eyed the gaunt white stones of the ruins. “… meaning no disrespect — a crone?”
    Stag’s suppressed feelings burst out; he called the man by sundry sea-names which made him scowl and wince, concluded, “It’s hours before noontide, coney-brain! Wit-told! Get on with it! Get on!”
    The man swallowed, gave a laugh in which sheepishness and resentment were about equally present. They got on with it. They left the road by and by for a well-marked path winding through the hedgerows like a sunken stream. By and by the rows fell away and they observed — Stag and Bosun and the woman, at least — with surprise how high they had already come. Fat farmlands lay below, common-tilth and state-fields. Now the path wound along through pasture, with here and there the golden fleeces of the flocks shining in the sunlight. Stag heard the Bosun draw in his breath and dive upon a (so it at first seemed) rock, but in a moment he saw it was no rock, but some live creature.
    The bosun held it almost fearfully. “What thing is this I have here?” he exclaimed. The packtrainman dismounted and had only taken a few steps when he gave a grin of surprise. “A gossip! An airsucker!”
    Stag made no objection to the halt, but seemed not pleased; still, he came up to look at the thing, lizard forebody, snakefish aftbody, and face like some caricature of an old woman — It seemed as though some awareness of this resemblance just then occurred to the onagerer: Crone? Crone! — and he looked up hastily. But the sun was by no means at meridian.
    And the woman looked up, in her litter, and half-turned to see.
    It was as though this action for the first time reminded Stag of her presence.