The Fourth Book Of Lost Swords : Farslayer's Story (Saberhagen's Lost Swords 4) by Fred Saberhagen (ereader iphone .TXT) 📕

      When Zoltan came within reach of the body, he felt a rush of relief, intense but brief. This body had two legs, it could not be that of a mermaid. Nor could it be Black Pearl, he thought, perhaps not even a real corpse, though the thing was floating facedown. Whatever had happened to cause death could not have left her looking so shrunken, almost waxlike and inhuman.

      “This is no mermaid!”

      Soft Ripple looked at him with rage and pity in her face. “It is, it is. We all of us get our legs back when we die. Did you not know that?”

      He looked at her, shaking his head. He had never had any suspicion of such a thing.

      Ben of Purkinje, leaning from his boat as it drifted nearer, took hold of the body with a huge hand and turned it over gently.

      At the first human touch, a little swarm of almost invisible powers, like half-material insects, deserted the corpse and went whining and buzzing their way up into the empyrean.

      Ben rumbled: “Aye, this is demon-death if ever I’ve seen it. Hard to tell how long she’s been here, though.”

      “No!” Zoltan screamed the word. Now he had seen the face. It seemed a modeled parody of Black Pearl’s.

      Mark put a hand on his nephew’s shoulder. Lady Yambu asked Soft Ripple sharply: “Is it really true that your kind always reverts to having legs at death?”

      “It is true of all our kind in this river. I have seen it often enough; I ought to know.” The bitter hatred in her glared suddenly at Prince Mark, as if he had been Black Pearl’s killer. “We are allowed only a few years of life at best.”

      “I am sorry.” Yambu’s voice was kind and soft. “How did you come to find the body?”

      Coaxed by Lady Yambu, Soft Ripple explained how she had come to make the discovery.

      “I have been worried about Pearl for some time, and yesterday I followed her to see where she was going. I saw her start to struggle up the shallow creek here, and I wondered what her goal could possibly be. She was swimming and floundering her way upstream toward the place where the hermit is said to live. I became very worried, and thought of following her even there, but then I gave up that idea, because I thought it was really crazy for a mermaid to try to ascend such a stream.

      “So I waited in the river nearby for her to come down again. After a long time, hours, a demon came roaring through the air, and I was terrified. I heard a screaming inhuman sound, and I saw a mysterious and ugly shadow hurtling across the sky. I could see it even from under the water, and I could feel the sickness that the creature brought with it. I wanted to hide, because I thought that the treacherous magician might have called a demon up to kill me—but it wasn’t me that the thing was after.”

      “What treacherous magician?”

      The mermaid spat the words. “Cosmo Malolo is the name he’s known by in the world.”

      Bonar, shocked, demanded: “Cosmo is still alive?”

      Soft Ripple ignored the clan leader’s question. She said: “I didn’t dare to come back here until this morning. I hadn’t had any contact with Pearl all night, and I was more worried than ever. I looked for her, and I found her here—like this.”

      Gesner until now had been listening to the mermaid’s story in silence. Now he said sharply: “Let me see that amulet that you are wearing.”

      Soft Ripple raised a pale hand to the chain around her throat. “I took it from Black Pearl’s body. What’s wrong with that? She was my friend.”

      Other people in both boats spoke to her more softly and courteously, asking about the amulet. At last she said: “Many of the girls in the river wear ornaments around their necks. Some wear trinkets that they find along the bottom of the river. Some are given baubles by fishermen, because the men hope that the mermaids can send them good luck in return—I don’t think it ever really works that way. And some of us are given presents by our families who live on land.”

      Gesner asked: “But do men ever give you these? I mean, as they might give presents to a girl with legs?”

      “Lacking legs and what’s between them,” the girl said simply, “we have no men. What man would want one who can never truly be a woman? We mermaids have only each other, and our short lives to be endured.” She turned to Zoltan and flared up at him: “Why do you weep for her?” It seemed really to puzzle her that a man with legs should do so. “It is we who are still alive who are unlucky. What are you doing? Why do you want to put her body in the boat? Let her go down the river like a dead fish, and be forgotten, the way the rest of us are going.”

      “The point about the amulet she wears,” said Gesner, “is that I can recognize cousin Cosmo’s magical sign on it.”

      Soft Ripple stared at him. When his words had penetrated, she tore the amulet from her neck with fear and loathing, and threw it away into the river. “I never thought that it came from him!” she cried.

      Zoltan was sitting now with his head down, not really paying attention to the others.

      Mark reached from the boat and caught the raging girl by the hair. “There’ll be time later to have a tantrum,” he said, in a new and harder voice. “If you can tell me where the Sword is now, do so.”

      “You are wearing it at your side.” But Soft Ripple said this sullenly, not as if she really believed it.

      The prince released his grip. “I wear its fellow, which has a different power, and a different mark that Vulcan put on it.”

      “What power?” It was hard to tell how seriously the question was intended.

      “That of