fire. Cook.”
She spoke a dialect of the northern Grail Empire. One he had known well as a youth but had not heard in a century. He gestured at her to keep it slow. He took her advice and ate slowly, too.
She stopped needing thought pauses between words and phrases but never spoke at a conversational pace. “You are not the only sorcerer. But you are the one who had the right spell.”
The raw kraken lost its savor. Februaren supposed that was his own body telling him to stop eating. So he tried to concentrate on the girl. Without having his gaze drift downward.
She was admirably equipped, there, just a hand below her chin.
He supposed her capacity to distract was why she had been chosen to speak for the mer.
“You may think we fed you in gratitude for your help. In less desperate times that would be true. We are a peaceful, hospitable people. But that luxury has been taken from the mer who are trapped here. We feed you, instead, by way of investing in our own survival. You have legs. You can make the journey even the greatest hero of the mer could not endure.” To his frown she replied, “I cannot go far from the water. I have to return to the wet frequently. Please. Tell your story.”
Little splashes behind Februaren told him he had an audience broader than a single shape-changed girl.
He told ninety percent of the truth. And no deliberate lies.
The girl said, “We are after the same thing. The opening of the way. Otherwise, we all die. And the world of men will follow. Unless …”
“Yes? Unless?”
“We are at the mercy of the Aelen Kofer. Only the Aelen Kofer can open the way. Only the Aelen Kofer have the skills to rebuild the rainbow bridge. Only the Aelen Kofer can save the Tba Mer. And …”
The girl wanted him to ask. “And?”
“Only you can go where the Aelen Kofer have gone. Only you have legs to survive the dry journey. Only your human lips can shape the magical word that will compel the Aelen Kofer to hear your appeal.”
“Magic word? What magic word?” A swift riffle through his recollections of north myth exhumed nothing. “Rumplestiltskin?”
“No! Invoke the name of the one whose name we dare not speak. The one you named in your tale.”
“All right.” He would have to think about that. It must be Ordnan, whose name was not to be spoken though everyone knew it somehow. But the Gray Walker was gone. Named or unnamed, he had no power anymore. How could an extinct god compel the Aelen Kofer? “But I can’t make any journey if I’m sealed up inside here.”
“Only the middle world, your world and mine, is denied us. The Aelen Kofer went down into their own realm.”
“Down? I thought they sailed away aboard the golden barge of the gods.”
“No. The barge is right behind you. You were on it. It is involved, but the dwarves went down. Back to the world whence the Old Ones summoned them in the great dawn of their power. Back when they were the New Gods and the Golden Ones.”
The girl stopped talking. The old man was pleased. He had time to do more than labor after what she was trying to say.
She was patient. As were the mer in the water behind Februaren.
“I don’t know the stories of this world as good as I should. How does one move from this world to that of the dwarves?”
The answer was absurd on its face. And explained why someone might think the Aelen Kofer had gone away on a barge.
His acquaintance with religion suggested that most were founded on logical absurdities easily discerned from outside. And yet, each was true, courtesy of the Night. Somewhere. At some time. At least part of the time.
A dozen Instrumentalities of the grand, bizarre old sort had shown their resurrected selves of late. He had come here seeking help dealing with the worst of the breed.
He could almost feel the bitter cold breath of the Windwalker.
* * *
Absurd. But real. Februaren boarded the rotting ship again. Gingerly, afraid the decay might be so advanced that ladders would collapse under his negligible weight. But time had not advanced to meet his dread.
The ship was not large. It was low in the waist, rising only a few feet higher than the quay. Februaren doubted that it drew a dozen feet heavily loaded. The main weather deck was six feet above the waterline.