Читать книгу Crystal Gorge - David Eddings - Страница 14

There was a steel-grey quality about the early morning light when Gunda led Veltan and Ekial out of Veltan’s house the next day, and Ekial felt that everything was flat for some reason. Then he realized that it was the lack of shadows that flattened things. Shadows don’t serve any purpose, but they do add a certain depth to the scenery.

When they crested the hill that stood between the house of Veltan and the beach, Ekial noticed that the sea was also grey.

‘The tide’s gone out,’ Gunda said when they reached his yawl. ‘We’ll have to drag the Albatross on down to the water.’

‘I know that the tides rise and fall as the day goes by,’ Ekial said to Veltan as the three of them took hold of the slender little boat, ‘but I have no idea of what causes that.’

‘The moon,’ Veltan replied. ‘It gives her something to do when she gets bored.’

‘I don’t exactly understand,’ Ekial admitted.

‘It’s a bit complicated,’ Veltan said. ‘Let’s get the Albatross out into deeper water first, and then I’ll see if I can explain it.’

It took the three of them a while to get the Albatross out into deeper water, and then, wet to their hips, they clambered into the narrow yawl. Gunda took his place at the oars and rowed them on out into the open sea. ‘That’s about far enough,’ he muttered half to himself. Then he laid the oars aside and pulled on a long rope that raised the sail. ‘The wind takes it from here,’ he explained to Ekial. ‘And the nice part of that is that I don’t even have to pay her.’

‘What if she’s not blowing in the direction you want her to?’ Ekial asked.

Gunda shrugged. ‘It’s back to the oars then. I haven’t found a way to bribe the wind yet, but I’m working on it.’

‘You were talking about how the moon makes the sea go up and down,’ Ekial said to Veltan then.

‘Oh, yes,’ Veltan said, ‘I was, wasn’t I?’ He squinted at the horizon. ‘I think that maybe the term “gravity” might make it more clear.’ Then he went on at some length about something that didn’t make much sense to Ekial.

It all became much more clear, however, when Veltan mentioned ‘attraction’.

‘Oh,’ Ekial said. ‘That makes much more sense than what you said before.’

‘It does?’Veltan seemed a bit surprised.

‘Of course. It’s a lot like what happens to a female cow at mating time. The sea notices that the moon’s passing by, and she gets those “urges” to – well –’ he faltered. ‘You know what I mean.’ He was just a bit embarrassed by what he’d just said.

‘Now that makes a lot more sense than all that talk about “gravity”, I’d say,’ Gunda added.

‘Are you saying that the sea gets mating urges twice a day?’ Ekial demanded with a certain surprise.

‘I most certainly wouldn’t,’ Veltan replied. ‘I learned a long time ago that nobody in his right mind offends Mother Sea. You don’t want to make her angry.’

‘It does make a certain amount of sense, though, Veltan,’ Gunda said. ‘I’ve heard that Mommy Sea is where all life comes from – people, animals, fish, and all that – so she’s probably getting urges all the time, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Not out loud when I’m sitting in a boat a mile from shore, I wouldn’t,’ Veltan replied.

It took them several days to reach the port city of Castano on the north coast of the empire, and Gunda led them to a place he called an ‘inn’. ‘I’ll spread the word along the waterfront that you’re hiring and that the pay’s good, Veltan,’ he said. ‘I’d make a point of letting them see those gold blocks.’ Then he looked at Ekial. ‘How many horse-soldiers are we talking about here?’

Ekial squinted at the busy street outside. ‘There are six clans along the north coast,’ he replied, ‘and if I understood what Dahlaine told me correctly, he might need us up in his part of the Land of Dhrall before too much longer. There are more clans farther south, but it might take a while to get word to them. I’m quite sure that the north clans can provide about fifty thousand men – and horses, of course. The clans have more men that, but they won’t let us have them all. Most of them will have to stay behind to tend to the cattle.’

Veltan scratched his cheek. ‘If we can crowd five hundred men on each ship, we’ll need a hundred ships.’

‘You’re forgetting the horses, I think,’ Ekial said. ‘Horses need more room than the men do.’

‘That’s going to be quite a large fleet, Veltan,’ Gunda said. ‘You’ll need a lot of those gold blocks.’

‘That’s not really a problem, Gunda,’ Veltan replied. ‘I can put my hands on as many as we’ll need.’

‘How? We’re here, and the gold’s back in your home country.’

‘I’ll have to cheat a little, that’s all. I’m an expert when it comes to cheating.’

‘I should have known that something like that would crop up,’ Gunda said. ‘I’ll go pass the word that you’re hiring ships, and then I think I’ll nose around Castano just a bit. The Amarite Church might be just a bit miffed about what happened in that basin up in your part of the Land of Dhrall, and if they’re planning anything, we probably should know about it.’

‘Good idea,’ Veltan agreed, ‘but get the word out that I’m hiring men and ships first. My big brother might start getting grumpy if we take too long.’

It didn’t take long for the word to get out in Castano that Veltan was hiring ships and that he was paying more than twice as much as was usual in this part of the world. Try though he might, Ekial never actually saw Veltan pull any of the blocks of gold out of the air – or wherever it was that he had them stored – but the gold blocks were always there when he needed them.

Most of the ship owners – or captains – or whatever else it was that they called themselves – eagerly accepted Veltan’s first offer. Right at first, a fair number of the Trogites seemed to want to haggle, but Veltan cut that off by abruptly dismissing the hagglers with ‘next, please’.

At the end of the first day, Veltan turned to Ekial. ‘I seem to have lost count,’ he admitted. ‘How many did we pick up today?’

Ekial ran his finger down the stick he’d been notching with his dagger. ‘Twenty-three,’ he said.

‘Maybe we should speed things up a bit tomorrow,’ Veltan mused.

‘You let them talk too much,’ Ekial said. ‘They all want to tell you long stories about how nice their ships are and their skilled crews and all sort of other things that don’t really matter. There are ways that you can cut that off.’

‘Oh?’

‘We’ve had dealings with Trogites on the north coast of the Land of Malavi, and we’ve found a way to cut off all the chatter.’

‘I’d be happy to hear about that.’

‘Try “Take it or leave it”. It gets right to the point, and it lets them know that you’re not interested in any fairytales. I think you might be just a little too polite.’ He hesitated. ‘I don’t want to offend you, Veltan, but is it really wise to just hand one of those blocks to anybody who comes in here claiming that he owns a ship? They could be lying, you know.’

Veltan smiled. ‘I have a way to take care of that, Prince Ekial. Any Trogite who doesn’t own a ship won’t have the gold block I gave him when we sail away from Castano.’

‘It might take quite a while to track all those cheaters down, you know.’

‘I won’t have to do that. You may have noticed that the gold blocks appear when I want them to.’

‘Well, as a matter of fact I have, and I can’t for the life of me see how you do that.’

‘The gold blocks come when I call them, Prince Ekial. All I’ll have to do is call the ones I gave to the cheaters, and they’ll come right back to me.’

‘What if the cheater’s got his block inside one of those iron boxes?’

‘It won’t really make any difference, my friend. They will come back when I call them.’

It was two days later when Ekial’s stick had seventy-eight notches cut into it. ‘We’ll probably finish up tomorrow, Veltan,’ Ekial said. ‘You might want to let the ones you’ve already hired know that we’ll be leaving here on the day after tomorrow.’ Then he remembered something. ‘We will need ships for the horses as well, you know.’

‘I’ve already come up with a way to take care of that, Prince Ekial,’ Veltan replied.

‘Oh? How’s that?’

‘Have you ever heard the expression “You don’t really want to know”?’

‘You’re going to cheat, I take it.’

‘I wouldn’t exactly call it “cheating”, Prince Ekial. Let’s just say “adjust” instead.’

Just then, Gunda came into their room in the inn, and he was grinning broadly.

‘You look all bright and bubbly today, Gunda,’ Veltan noted.

‘The Amarite Church seems to be getting purified, Veltan,’ Gunda replied still grinning.

‘That might take quite a bit of doing, Gunda.’

‘It appears that the new Naos – that’s the title of the head man in the church – has a real bad case of decency, and he’s spreading it around. He’s been confiscating the palaces of the assorted high-ranking churchmen and turning them into homes for the very poor, and the former owners of those palaces are now required to live in those tiny little cells in the basements of the churches where they serve.’

‘I’d imagine that’s caused quite a bit of screaming,’ Veltan said.

‘Not any more,’ Gunda said. ‘The high-ranking churchmen who make too much noise are investigated by a new breed of “Regulators” – if that’s the right word. Anyway, there probably aren’t more than three or four of those Adnaris who’ve been even moderately honest. Most of them are guilty of assorted high – and low – crimes, and they’re dragged before a church court – with the Naos, Udar IV, passing judgement. There’s no death-penalty for churchies, but holy Udar has come up with something even worse.’

‘What can be worse than the death penalty, Gunda?’ Veltan asked.

‘He sells them as slaves. They probably aren’t very good slaves, but he doesn’t charge very much for them, so the slave-owner probably gets his money’s worth.’

Veltan stared at Gunda for a moment, and then he burst out laughing.

It was two days later, not long after dawn, when the Albatross, followed by a fleet of the huge, lumbering Trogite merchant ships, set sail from the port of Castano, sailing toward the west. Ekial still had a few doubts about this, but Veltan seemed to be fairly certain that everything would turn out as they’d planned.

Ekial wasn’t entirely certain just how far off to the north Dahlaine’s part of the Land of Dhrall lay, or how long it would take the slow-moving Trogite ships to make the journey, but Veltan kept telling him not to worry.

Ekial found that to be quite irritating, for some reason. He had every right to worry just as much as he wanted to.