The Fourth Book Of Lost Swords : Farslayer's Story (Saberhagen's Lost Swords 4) Fred Saberhagen (the unexpected everything txt) 📖

      “I can love a mermaid, I’ve discovered. I can love you. I wish that I had pretty things to give you. I wish…”

      The mermaid was silent for a few moments. Then she took his hand in her cold fingers, asking: “And if there should be no way for me to change, to ever be a normal woman? If I must remain like this until I die?”

      “I love you,” he repeated, as if that meant some means of solving any problem must exist. And if there was the slightest pause before Zoltan gave his answer, the pause might very well have been only the kind in which a speaker tries to find the most forceful words in which it was possible to express an idea.

      “But you would be happier if you had two legs,” he added a few seconds later, feeling that he sounded foolish. “And how can I ever love you as a man should love a woman, unless…”

      “There might be a way for me to have two legs again,” she said. “I say there might be. If we can find it. Often I dream I am a little girl again, with legs.”

      “Then when you were a little girl you were not a mermaid?”

      “Oh no.” Black Pearl shook her head decisively. “That happened to me later. It is a result of evil magic.”

      “So I have heard. Then I say there must be good magic to counteract it. Tell me what happened. Tell me how this curse ever came to fall upon your people.”

      Briefly the mermaid did as Zoltan asked. The feud, and the curse it brought, had fallen upon Black Pearl’s people long before she was born. She could only tell Zoltan something of the early years of the feud, as she, when a small girl with two legs, had heard the story from the elders of her people. And tonight she also gave her lover an idea of what life was like for someone upon whom the curse had fallen.

      All girls born in the two or three afflicted villages lived seemingly normal lives up until puberty. Then, at about the time of commencement of the menses, perhaps one out of ten of the young women underwent what could only be described as a magical seizure. There was no telling ahead of time which girls would be afflicted.

       “Sometimes the change will strike by day, sometimes by night. Always it is very sudden. No one knows who will be taken and who will be spared. Except that if a girl has already been a woman for three cycles of the moon, or if she becomes pregnant, she is certain to be spared.”

      “Why don’t the people of these villages pack up and go somewhere else when they have daughters? Just to get away from this?”

      “The villages are their homes. Anyway, people say that in my grandmother’s time some people tried that. The only effect was that when the change struck their daughters they were far from home, in some cases far from any river, among people who did not understand, and who wanted to burn the helpless girls as witches.”

      “I see.”

      Black Pearl looked sharply at Zoltan. “You must come in a boat next time. The water will freeze you, my poor Zoltan, your teeth are starting to chatter already.”

      “I’ll be all right. But what about you? The water is so cold—”

      Black Pearl laughed; it was a cheerful and wholly human sound. “My poor man, I live in this water all winter; it would have to turn to ice before its coldness bothered me. Next time, tomorrow night, let us meet out there.” And Black Pearl, pointing out over the dark water, indicated to her lover what she called the Isle of Mermaids, and said that it was easily reachable by boat. “There are two islands. The small one is the Isle of Magicians, and we had better avoid that.”

      “Are there magicians on it?”

      Black Pearl hesitated. “Sometimes there are. And there are other things, which can be unpleasant. The Isle of Mermaids is much nicer. Any of the maids you find there ought to be willing to pass a message on to me, if for some reason I’m not there.”

      “What would happen if I did go to Magicians’ Island?”

      Again she seemed uncertain. “Probably nothing bad. But sometimes, when people go there, there is unpleasantness.”

      He decided to let that subject drop for the time being. “Wouldn’t it be easier for us to meet by day?”

      “Yes.” The mermaid’s evident uneasiness remained. “But if the lords of the Malolo manor find out that you are meeting me, they will want to charge you a price for my company. You are not a wealthy man, are you?”

      “No, I am not. But in any case I would not be inclined to pay them a price for that. You’re not their slave, are you?” The mere thought made him angry.

      “I’m no one’s slave. But it will be better if you can avoid dealing with those people altogether.”

      “Can’t do that very well,” he announced cheerfully. “I’m living in their house now.”

      Black Pearl’s confusion only increased. “If you refuse to pay them, Zoltan, then you will have to fight with them. They do consider mermaids slaves if someone else wants one of them. I have already been sold once, as you know.”

      “My poor girl, there aren’t enough Malolo manor-lords left to fight very successfully with anyone. The Sword called Farslayer has taken care of that.”

      Black Pearl considered this in silence, running fingers through her long dark hair, tossing her head. She said: “Even mermaids have heard about the fight.” After a pause she asked: “Which ones are dead?”

      “Quite a number. I didn’t get any list of their names. Why?”       “Nothing. Is there—is there a man named Cosmo among them?”

      “No. Not among those still living at the manor or among their dead. He’s missing. Why?”

      “Why? I don’t know. I don’t suppose