THREE

 

Again, as Jeremy hurried about his work, he had the sensation of being watched. But he saw and heard nothing to support the feeling. Everyone in the village was busy as usual, preoccupied with work, the busy harvesttime of midsummer—Uncle Humbert had explained how the variously mutated varieties of grapes came to maturity in sequence and disasters might befall them unless they were tended and harvested in exactly the right way.

The ruts in the village's only street still held puddles from last week's rain. Half a dozen small houses lined each side. Half the menfolk went fishing in the river Aeron, sometimes hauling in freshwater clams. The shells were sold by the ton to carters, who carried them off to the cities, to be cut up by craft workers and polished for use as decorations, bought by folk who could not afford more precious metals, jewels, or ivory. Now and then a pearl appeared, but these of the freshwater kind were only of minor value.

The next time Jeremy returned to the little patch of woods where Sal lay nested he traveled most of the way along the riverside path. This brought him right past the local riparian shrine to Priapus, a squat figure carved in black stone, who seemed to be brooding over his own massive male organs, and to Dionysus, whose tall, youthful form was carved in pale marble, handsomely entwined with ivy and other vines. Beside the taller god crouched a marble panther, and he held in his left hand his thyrsus staff, a rod with a pinecone at the end. His right hand was raised as if to confer a blessing upon passersby. A fountain, an adjunct to the main well of the village, tinkled into a small pond at the stone gods' feet.

Starting some twenty yards from the shrine, piles of clamshells, separated by irregular distances, lay along the bank, waiting to be hauled away by boat or by wagon. The meats, mottled black and white like soft marble, in warm weather quickly beginning to rot, were hauled up the hill by barrow to fertilize the vines and hops and vegetables. Pushing a barrow filled with clam meats, as Jeremy had learned early in the summer, was a stinking job, beset by many flies, much worse than hauling grapes.

When days and weeks of the growing season went by without adequate rain, which had happened more than once since the beginning of summer, Jeremy and others filled kegs and barrels with river water and pushed and dragged them up the hill. Uncle Humbert's vineyard was comparatively high on the slope.

Today those villagers not toiling in the vineyards were out in their boats fishing. Some kind of seasonal run of fish was on, and the general scarcity of people in the vicinity of the village during the day made it easier for a fugitive to hide nearby without being noticed.

 

Suddenly, as a result of his responding to a whispered cry for help, a great weight of responsibility had descended on Jeremy's shoulders. Now, for the first time in his life, someone else was totally dependent on him. But what might have been a great problem was, in effect, no burden at all. Because suddenly life had a purpose. The only problem was that he might fail.

Sal said to him: "This puts a great burden on you, Jeremy."

He blinked at her. "What does?"

"Me. I depend on you for everything."

"No!" He shook his head, trying to make her understand. "I mean, that's not a problem."

 

The boy had just scrounged up some food, which his client attacked with savage hunger. Her mouth was still full when she said: "My name is something you need not know." His hurt must have shown in his face, for immediately she added: "It's for your own good. And others'. What you don't know you can never tell."

"I'll never tell!"

"Of course not!" She put out her hand to gently stroke his. Somehow the touch seemed the most marvelous that he had ever known. He was touched by the fact that her hand was smaller than his. He could feel the roughness of her fingers, as callused as his own.

"I see you can be trusted." And she had turned her head again to favor him with that look, on which it now seemed that his life depended.

Before he could find any words to answer that, there came a noise nearby, a scurrying among dead leaves, making them both start, but when the sound came again they could tell that it was only some small animal.

Jeremy settled down again beside her, still holding her hand. As long as he sat here, he would be able to hold her hand. "Who hurt you this way?" he whispered fiercely. "Who is it that's hunting you?"

"Who? The servants of hell. Lord Kalakh's men. If I tell you who isn't hunting me, the list will be shorter." She bestowed on Jeremy a faint, wan smile and sighed. "Yet I've done nothing wrong."

"I wouldn't care if you had!" he burst out impulsively. That wasn't what worried him. What did concern him was a new fear that she might be growing feverish, delirious. He dared to feel her forehead, an act that brought only a vague smile as reaction from the patient. Yes, she was too warm. If only there were someone he could call upon for help. . . . About all that he could do was bring more water and a scrap of cloth to wet and try to cool her forehead with it.

When Jeremy saw the young woman again, Sal in her feverish weakness increased her pleas and demands to be taken or sent downriver. She was determined to go soon, if she died in the attempt. Jeremy tried to soothe her and keep her lying still. Well, he was going to take her where she wanted to go; that was all there was to it.

The very worst part of the situation now was that Sal's mind seemed to be wandering. Jeremy feared that if she really went off her head, she might get up and wander off and do herself some harm. And there was a second problem, related to the first: he couldn't tell if she was getting stronger or weaker. She had refused his offer to try to find a healer for her, turned it down so fiercely that he wasn't going to bring it up again. He had to admit that if she was determined to keep her secrets, she was probably right.

Several times, in her periods of intermittent fever and delirium, Sal murmured about the seven. As far as Jeremy could make out, this was the number of people who were involved with her in some business of life-and-death importance. Then she fell into an intense pleading with one of the seven to do something. Or, perhaps, not to do the opposite.

Almost half of what Sal babbled in her fever was in another language, like nothing that Jeremy had ever heard before. He could not understand a word.

When she paused, he asked: "Who are the seven?"

Sal's eyes looked a little clearer now, and her voice was almost tragic. "Who told you about that?"

"You did. Just now. I'm sorry if I—"

"Oh god. Oh, Lord of the Sun. What am I going to do?"

"Trust me." He dared to put his hand on her forehead and almost jerked it away again, the fever was so high.

She shook her head, as if his vehemence had pained her. "I have a right to carry what I'm carrying. But I can't use it. If only I were worthy."

To Jeremy it sounded almost as if she thought he was accusing her of stealing something—as if he'd care, one way or the other. Sal was his, and he was hers; she trusted him. "What is this thing you're carrying that's so important? I could keep it for you. I could hide it."

Sal drew a deep breath, despite the pain that breathing seemed to cause. "What I bear with me ... is a terrible burden. Mustn't put that burden on you. Not yet."

The suggestion that she might not trust him as utterly and automatically as he trusted her struck him with a sharp pang of anguish.

His hurt feelings must have been plain in his face. "No, dear. My good Jeremy. All the good gods bless and help you. Wouldn't be safe for you to know ..."

He couldn't tell if she meant not safe for him or for the secret. Her fever was getting worse again. She had started to wander, more than a little, in her speech.

Still there were intervals when Jeremy's new comrade's mind was clear. In one of those intervals she fiercely forbade him to summon anyone else to her aid.

He nodded. "That's all right. I can't think of anyone around here that I'd trust. Except maybe the midwife; but you're not pregnant. . . ." He could feel his face turning warm again. "I mean, I don't suppose ..."

Sal smiled wanly at that. "No, I'm not. Thank the good gods for small favors at least."

When she paused, he asked: "Who are the good gods?"

Sal ignored the question, which had been seriously meant. "Don't tell the midwife anything. She can't do anything for me that you can't do."

Presently Jeremy left Sal, whispering a promise that he would be back as soon as possible, with more food.

For several hours he continued working at his routine tasks, with a private fear growing in him, and a tender excitement as well. He tried to keep his new emotions from showing in his face, and as far as he could tell he was succeeding.

And then there were hours, hours terrible indeed for the lonely caretaker, when her mind seemed almost entirely gone.

At first he could not get Sal to tell him just where her goal downriver was. But soon, under stress, she admitted that she had to get a certain message to someone at the Academy.

Coming to herself again, and as if realizing that she was in danger of death, Sal suddenly blurted out a name. "Professor Alexander."

"What?"

"He's the man, the one you must take it to if I am dead."

"Your secret treasure? Yes, all right. Professor Alexander. But you won't be dead." Jeremy was not quite sure whether Professor might be a given name or some kind of title, like Mayor or Doctor. But he would find out. He would find out everything he had to know.

"He's at the Academy. Do you know what that is?"

"I can find out. A sort of school, I think. If you want to give me—"

"And if he ... Professor Alexander—"

"Yes?"

"If he should be dead, or ... or missing—"

"Yes?"

"Then you must give it to ... to Margaret Chalandon. She is also . . . very worthy."

"Margaret Chalandon." Carefully he repeated the name. "I will."

"What I carry is ..."

"Is what? You can tell me."

"... is so important that. . . but if only I were worthy. ..."

Still Sal maddeningly refused to tell her savior exactly what the thing was or where it might be. It couldn't be very big, Jeremy thought. He'd seen almost every part of her body in recent hours, while trying to do the duties of a nurse. Certainly there was no unseen place or pocket in her clothing with room enough for anything much bigger than a piece of paper. Jeremy thought, Maybe it's a map of some kind, maybe a list of names. He kept his guesses to himself.

"Jeremy."

"Yes, Sal."

"If you should get there, and I don't... then you must give him what I will give to you."

"Yes."

"And tell him..."

"Yes."

"Seven of us were still alive ... at the end. We did all we could. Split up, and went in different ways. Make it hard for them to follow."

"You want me to tell him, Professor Alexander, that you went in seven different ways and you did all that you could."

"That's enough. It will let him know ... Jerry? Do your friends call you Jerry?"

"When I had friends, they did."

And either Sal really wanted to hear her rescuer's life story or Jeremy wanted so badly to tell it to her that he convinced himself she wanted to hear it.

But with her breathing the way she was and looking at him like she did, he soon broke off the unhappy tale and came back to their present problems. "Sal, I'll carry the thing for you now, whatever it is. I'll take it to one of the people you say are worthy. I remember their names. Or I can hide it, somewhere near here— until you feel better. No one will ever find it."

"I know you would . . . Jerry. But I can't. Can't put it all on you. I'm still alive. I'm going to get better yet. Tomorrow or the next day we can travel." She hesitated and seemed to be pondering some very difficult question. "But if I die, then you must take it."

Helplessly he clenched his fists. It seemed that they were going round and round in a great circle of delirium. It was impossible to be cruel to her, search her ruthlessly, impossible to take from her by force whatever it might be. "But what is it?"

Still something, some pledge, some fear, kept her from telling him. Unworthy.

"Can't you even show it to me?"

She had to agonize over the decision for some time. At last she shook her head. "Not yet."

"Sal. Then how can I—?" But he broke off, thinking that she was delirious again.

 

Late that night, Jeremy lay in the damp warmth of his cramped loft, listening to a steady rainbeat on the roof above and trying to sleep on the folded quilt that generally served him as both bed and mattress. Whatever position he assumed in the narrow space, at least one slow trickling leak got through the decaying shingles and managed to make wet contact with some part of his body. He had thrown off his clothes—being wet was less bother that way—and was fretfully awake. Tomorrow the going with his wheelbarrow would be slow and difficult, both uphill and down, the steep paths treacherous with mud.

Tonight he was doubly tired, with urgent mental strain as well as physical work. It wasn't girl pictures in his mind or even the cold dripping that was keeping him awake. Rather it was the thought of Sal just lying out there, wounded, in the rain. If there were only something, anything, like a waterproof sheet or blanket, that he could borrow or steal to make even a small rainproof shelter for her ... but he could think of nothing rainproof in the whole village. Some of the houses had good solid roofs— but he couldn't borrow one of those. Ordinary clothes and blankets would be useless, soaking up the water and then letting it run through.

Briefly Jeremy considered sliding out the window to lie on the shed roof. Exposing himself fully to the rain, he could at least share fully in Sal's distress. But he quickly thrust the idea aside. Adding to his own discomfort would do her no good at all. In fact, he had better do the very opposite. He had to get whatever sleep he could, because he needed to think clearly. Tremendous problems needed to be solved, and Sal was in such bad shape that by tomorrow she might not be able to think at all.

And she was depending on him. Absolutely. For her very life—and she was going to depend on him, for something else that seemed to mean even more than life to her. He must not, must not, fail her. Fiercely he vowed to himself that he would not.

Well, the air was still warm, she wouldn't freeze, and at least she would not go thirsty. Also, the rain would tend to blot out whatever trail she might have left, foil whatever efforts might be in progress, even now, to track her down.

And maybe the drenching would cool her fever. At least that was some kind of a hope he could hang onto. Enough to let him get a little sleep at last.

 

The next day, when he at last felt secure enough from observation to get back to his client, he was vastly relieved to see that Sal had survived the rain. Though her mind was clear now, she was still feverish, and he cursed himself for not being able to provide her shelter or find her some means of healing.

But she would not listen to his self-abuse. "Forget all that. It's not important. Maybe—listen to me, Jeremy—maybe you'll have to do something more important. More than you can imagine."

 

Jeremy had been trying for days now to devise plans for getting control of a boat without letting the owner know within a few hours that it had been stolen. But he could think of nothing; the only way was just to take one and go. Getting Sal to the river unobserved would be somewhat chancier. He decided that shortly after sunset would be the best time. Leave early in the night, and neither he nor the boat would be missed till after dawn; and travelers on the river left no trail.

 

Sal's most troublesome wound was on her upper thigh, almost in her crotch. To Jeremy, who had grown up in one small village after another, places where everyone generally bathed in the river, the plain facts of female anatomy were no mystery. In some ways his care of Sal became almost routine. The sight of her nakedness under these conditions did not arouse him physically—rather, he was intensely aware of a new surge of the fierce pride he had begun to feel in being Sal's trusted friend and confederate.

She looked, if anything, more feeble now than she had been two days ago; when Jeremy pulled her behind some bushes and helped her stand, she still could not walk for more than about two steps. He knew he wasn't strong enough to carry her for any meaningful distance, at least not when her injuries prohibited rough handling. He had dug a series of small holes for her to use as a latrine when he was gone.

So far the village dogs had been tolerant of the alien presence they must have scented or heard from time to time, but Jeremy feared they would create a fuss if he tried to help Sal move around at night. The boy considered bringing the dogs over, one at a time, to introduce them to her where she lay hidden, but he feared also that someone would notice what he was doing. He and Sal would just have to avoid the village as they made their way to the riverbank.

When he was helping her with the bandage again he dared to ask, "What. . . what did this to you?"

"A fury—did you ever hear of them?"

He was appalled. "A flying thing like a giant bat? A monster like in the stories?"

"Not as big as in some of the stories. But just as bad." She had to pause there.

"Why?" he whispered in dreadful fascination.

"Why bad? Because it's very real."

He stared at the very real wounds, the raw spots wherever two lash marks intersected, and tried to imagine what they must feel like. "I've never seen one."

"Pray that you never do. Oh, if I were only worthy!" The way she said the word endowed it with some mysterious power.

"Worthy of what?"

She heard that but wasn't going to answer. Turning her head, trying uselessly to get a good look at her own wounds, Sal observed calmly: "These aren't healing. I suppose some of them would be better off with stitches . . . but we're not going to try that."

Jeremy swallowed manfully. "I'll steal a needle and thread and try it if you want. I've never done it before."

"No." She was not too ill to mark the awkward turmoil in his face when he looked at her. "I don't want you to try to sew me up. Just tie the bandage back. It will be fine ... when I get downriver. Poor lad. Do you have a girlfriend of your own?"

He shook his head, carefully pulling a knot snug. "No. Is that better now, with the bandage?"

"Yes, much better." She managed to make the words almost convincing. "You will make an excellent physician, someday. Or surgeon. If that's what you want to be. And an excellent husband, I think, for some lucky girl."

He made an inarticulate sound. And cursed himself, silently, for not having the words to even begin to tell Sal what he felt. How could she say something like that to him? Some lucky girl. Why couldn't she see how desperately he loved her?

But of course for him to talk about, think about, loving her was craziness. A woman as beautiful and capable as Sal undoubtedly had a husband or, at least, a serious lover. Hell, she'd have her pick of grown-up, accomplished, handsome men. Successful warriors, great men in the world. They would naturally be standing in line, each hoping to be the one she chose.

Presently—putting out a hand to touch him on the arm—she asked Jeremy, "What do you want to be?" And it seemed that the question was important to her, taking her for a few moments out of her own pain and thoughts of failure.

Again Jeremy discovered that he had an answer ready, one that needed no thought at all. "I want to be someone who works at whatever kind of thing it is that you're doing. And help you do it. Spying, or whatever it is. That's what I'm going to do."

"You are doing that, Jeremy. Doing it already. Serving my cause better than you realize. Better than some tall bearded men I know, who ..." Once more she let her words trail away, not wanting to say too much.

Suddenly Sal, as if feeling a renewed urgency, again sharpened her demands that he help her out of her hiding place in the thicket and into a boat of some kind. And then she must be taken—or sent on her own, though she feared she would never be able to lift a paddle on her own—downriver.

"Sure I can get us a boat. Whenever you say the word. Row-boat or canoe, either one." One or two people had canoes, for fast trips to nearby relatives or markets. "I'll take you. Downriver where?"

"Have you heard of a place called the Academy, Jerry?"

"I've heard the name. You already told me that the people we want are there. The worthy ones."

"Do you know what it is? Think of it as a kind of school. A school for people who are . . . well, about your age or older. Some of them much older. It's near a city called Pangur Ban, if you know where that is. Where the great river joins the sea."

Jeremy nodded. "I've heard that much. Back when I lived in my own village. People said it was like a school for grown-up people."

"Yes. That describes it about as well as ... Jeremy. Jeremy, my love, pay close attention. I thought... if I stayed here and rested... but I'm not getting any stronger. Mind's clear right now, but actually weaker. Got to face that. Don't know if I'm going to make it down the river. It might be you'll be the only one alive when... No, hush now; listen....So I have to tell you things. And ask you to do a certain thing, if it should happen ... if things should work out so that I can't do it myself."

"Yes." Jeremy, my love. She'd really, truly, said those very words. To him. With his head spinning, he had to make a great effort to be able to hear anything else she said after that word.

She kept on trying to warn him. Between her breathless voice and her wandering mind she was not succeeding very well. She continued: "What I want you to do ... is dangerous."

As if that could make any difference! At the moment he felt only a bursting contempt for danger. "I'll do it. Tell me what it is."

Sal looked at him for what seemed a long time. He could almost see how the fever was addling her brains. To his despair, at the last moment she seemed to change her mind again. "No. I'd better not try to explain it all just yet. Maybe tomorrow."

It made him sick to realize the fact that Sal's mind was once more drifting, that she was getting worse.

For the first time he had to confront head-on the sickening possibility that she might die, before he could take her where she wished to go. The thought made him angry at her—what could he possibly do, how could he go on with his own life now, if Sal were dead?

 

That night, supper in the shabby little house was fish and oatmeal once again. For some reason there were no raisins—he could begin to hope that Aunt Lynn had grown sick of them herself. Jeremy took an extra piece of fish and when no one was looking hid it in his shirt, to take to Sal tomorrow.

Sitting at the table across from the two aging, gap-toothed strangers who happened to be his childless aunt and uncle, the boy found himself looking at them as if this were his first night at this table. Again he wondered how he had ever come to be there in their village, in their house, eating their oatmeal. The arrangement could only have come about as the result of some vast mistake. A cosmic blunder on the part of the gods, or whoever was in charge of arranging human lives.

On impulse, while the three of them were still sitting at supper, Jeremy brought up the subject of the Academy, saying that some passing boatman had talked about it.

Aunt Lynn and Uncle Humbert heard their nephew's words clearly enough. But in response they only looked at him in silence, displaying mild interest, as if he'd belched or farted in some peculiar way. Then they turned away again and sipped their water and their wine. Evidently neither of them felt any curiosity on the subject at all.

Presently Uncle Humbert began to talk of other things, on subjects he doubtless considered truly practical. Among the other jobs Jeremy would be expected to do in the fall, or in the spring, was somehow conveying water uphill to irrigate the vines on their sunny slopes.

"Mutant vines, you got to remember, Jer, and they need special treatment."

"I'll remember."

Jeremy found himself wishing that he could steal his uncle's boat, since it seemed that he would have to take someone's. But as a vinedresser, only occasionally a winemaker, not really a fisherman, Humbert had no boat.

It was next day at sundown when Jeremy's life, his whole world, changed even more suddenly and violently than on the day of his parents' death.

 

He was walking with studied casualness toward the place of rendezvous, bringing Sal a few more scraps of smuggled food, when his first sight of a fury, throbbing bat-like through the air, coming at treetop height in his general direction, threatened for a moment to paralyze him. Sal's enemies have come, to kill her and to steal her treasure.

In the distance, just beyond the last house of the village, he saw and heard a strange man, mounted on a cameloid, shouting orders, telling creatures and people to find "her."

Suddenly the darkening sky seemed full of furies, as black and numerous as crows.