Hart s Hope Page 0,12

carefully. His ship was too slow for a pirate, which was just as well - a pirate would starve on what he could steal from their fishing boats. His ship was rigged for just one man, and from the look of him he was not a sailor. So it was not jealousy that made them fear him. It was the way he kept himself covered in all weathers, as if he feared the sun; it was the stark white hair of his head, the gleam of pink in his eye like a crazed treehopper; it was his secret way. He knew more than they did, knew more than the wind as it teased the sea, knew more than the air-breathing octopus that spread himself on the water, knew more than the priestess of the Sweet Sisters who tended her burning stones at the point of the bay.

"What is he?" the fishermen asked their wives. "Who is he?" the wives asked the priestess. She touched the hot obsidian; the flesh of her finger sizzled; and she looked deep into her pain and said, "He rules by the power of blood. He finds shelter from storms in the open ocean. He finds shoals that make no whitecaps on the sea. He can dip into salt and bring up fair water. And the fish follow him dreaming, dreaming."

A wizard then, but not to be dreaded. So they took to watching him respectfully, and in a matter of weeks they learned that he meant to be kind. For if they followed him out to sea in the early hours before dawn, he would sail in his clumsy fashion for an hour or so, then stop and cast in his net. If the fishermen cast in their nets at that time, they found nothing. But if they waited until his net was full, if they watched as he laboriously brought it aboard, then he would sail back home, and they could then dip their nets into the sea and catch well, every day that they followed him, boats full to the brim with fish on some days, and never a day that the fish escaped entire.

So the coming of the pink-eyed wizard brought good to Brack. Not that they ever became friendly with the man. It's never good to mingle with folk who draw their power from the living blood. Besides, even if they had lost all their fear of the wizard fisherman, there was his daughter.

It seemed at first that she hardly knew she was a woman. She never left his side, and when he drew in his heavy nets, there she was beside him, pulling on her side, and pulling well - when the fishermen still thought she was a lad, they praised the boy among themselves for his hard work, if not for his skill. They knew soon enough that she was a woman, though. If the wizard dressed too much under the hot sun of the southern sea, his daughter dressed too little, wearing dungarees like a man, and casting away her shirt when the day was blazing, until back and breast alike were burnt dark: She seemed at first to care nothing for their gaze; as time passed, however, they began to think she was something of a wanton, shedding her clothing deliberately, so they would see her. They saw how her breasts grew fuller and more sluggishly pendulous as she worked. They saw how her belly swelled. She could not be more than a year or two into womanhood, and yet she was full of a child.

The priestess of the Sweet Sisters knew better, however. She, too, could count the months, but when she poured tears, sweat, and seawater drops on the hot pumice, they beaded up and stayed, skittering for a moment, then drifting across the rough stone like a fleet of sailboats in a bay, runing for her the message of the Sweet Sisters to this watcher by the sea. It was no incestuous child that would be born, but a daughter whose blood was filled with awesome power: a ten-month child ruled by the moon from her birth.

What should I do? asked the priestess, terrified.

But the water evaporated at last, leaving thin trails of salt upon the stone. It was. not for her to do anything, only to watch, only to know.

Some of the wives saw the fear in her face as the priestess looked across the water to the wizard fisherman and the hut where