They caught me before I got halfway across town and this time they beat me without pity. I thought all my bones would break, and perhaps they would have, except that I was young and limber. Then they took me before the procularius. That bleak and frosty man glowered at me and asked the lodgemaster, "How many times does this make for him?" "His fourth attempt, Sir."
"Where did we get such trash? Do with him as you did with the other. The ugly one."
So they would ship me wherever they had shipped Focale. I didn't care. It couldn't be any worse than staying at the lodge.
A guild proctor with a beefy red face and thick hulking shoulders ordered me into a land-car and we drove north and then west for half an hour or so. It was a sweltering day and the sun had a heavy gray-green veil over its face. After a time I saw the dark looming bulk of the ancient fortress outlined against the sky ahead.
Despite all my bravado I caught my breath sharply and shrank back into my seat. Why were we going there?
But we weren't. The proctor turned off on a side road that led straight to the sea. We halted at a turnoff and he ordered me out. The road here ran along the seaward side of a steep cliff made of some soapy-looking soft green stone, badly chipped and cracked. The sea lay twenty or thirty meters below; it was a straight drop down from the shoulder of the road. I looked over the edge. I had never had a close look at the sea of Megalo Kastro before. It was nothing at all like water; it was pink and stiff-looking, like some kind of disgusting custard, and steam was rising from it. The surface of it was rough and gritty. There was nothing like surf or waves. It lay almost inert, pressing up against the shore, making small, sinister rippling motions.
The proctor seized my amulet and pulled it away from my neck. "You won't be needing this any more, little Rom." He was too I saw what was about to happen and tried to break free. quick for me. He seized me by the waist and lifted me high overhead in one swift motion and hurled me far out into that loathsome sea.
I WAS DEAD. I HAD NO DOUBT OF THAT IF I DIDN'T BREAK my neck as I hit the surface of the sea I would be devoured in an instant by it. As I soared and plummeted I was sick with fear, knowing that this was my end. For years I had heard tales of this strange sea, how it was one giant living organism thousands of kilometers deep and broad. How it fed on the creatures of the land that tumbled into it, how sometimes it even would extend a sticky tendril of itself onto the shore to snare something passing by.
I was a long time falling. It seemed to take an hour. It went on so long that my fear left me and I grew impatient to know what would come next. I felt the warmth of the sea rising toward me and its strange odor, sweet and not unpleasant, struck my nostrils. Hot wind-currents played over the surface. I thought of my father and my sister Tereina and of the plump little whore Salathastra. Then I hit.
Despite the height from which I had fallen my landing was soft and easy. The sea seemed to reach up to catch me and it drew me down into itself Quietly I lay just beneath the surface, unmoving, not even bothering to breathe, cushioned by the density of the strange warm fluid.
Was this what being dead is like? How restful!
I floated. I drifted. The sea took me and carried me. I felt my clothing dissolve. Perhaps my skin and flesh were gone too and I was nothing but bones glistening in the steaming pink mud. I kept my eyes closed. I felt fingers of the sea caressing me everywhere, my thighs, my belly, my loins, unseen slithering serpents sliding over my body. There was a kind of ecstasy in that. The sea made soft sucking noises. It burbled and squeaked and hissed. I stretched out my arms and I could touch the fingertips of one hand to the shore and the other to the shore of the distant unknown western continent ten thousand kilometers away. My toes dangled down to the roots of the planet, where hidden volcanoes poured forth fiery lava.
It is digesting me, I thought.
It is making me part of itself.
I didn't care. I was dead. I loved the sea and I loved being eaten by it. Being absorbed by it. Becoming part of it.
Then a deep voice said, "Swim, Yakoub." "Swim where?"
"To the shore. This stuff can't hold you." "It's eating me."
"It will if you let it. But why let it?" "Who are you?"
"Open your eyes, Yakoub."
I didn't. I went on drifting. Warm, safe, sleepy.
"Yakoub." The deep voice again. More insistent. "Wake up. Wake up, you coward!"
That stung. "Coward? Me?" "You heard me."
"Why coward?"
"Because you are selling your whole life to this thing, and for a foolish price. Are you afraid to live? Are you afraid to do all the great things that destiny holds for you?"
I opened my eyes. There was purple haze all around me. I saw a ghost above me in a shimmering golden aura. Blazing eyes, black mustache. My father's face, almost. Almost. Not my father, but close kin all the same, someone I knew well. Knew better than my father, even. He looked angry but he was smiling also. "Yakoub," he murmured. Gently, now. "Swim, Yakoub. You must. This death is not for you." "What death is, father?"
"I am not your father."
"What is it you want me to do?" "Swim."
"How?" "Lift your arm. Good. Now the other one. Kick. Kick. Kick. Good, Yakoub. Kick. Kick."
The wriggling fingers of the sea danced about me like worms standing on their tails. Sea-stuff was in my mouth, my eyes, my ears. A strand of it held me around my throat. Another stroked my genitals, and I grew stiff there, and thrust with my hips, driving against the resilient warm mud. Now and again I opened my eyes. Colors flashed everywhere. The shore was far away, a black line against the sky. The ghost still hovered over me, eyes bright with encouragement. He said nothing.
But I could hear his booming laughter every time I swam another stroke. I saw other ghosts now, too, five, six, a dozen of them. The beautiful woman again. Beckoning to me, urging me on. Images flickered in the air, throngs of people, grand robes, glittering headdresses, strange planets, awesome ceremonies. Was it the sea that was throwing up these scenes, or my guardian ghosts? Swim, Yakoub. Swim. Swim! What a struggle it was! I yearned to let go, to relax, to give myself to the sea, to allow myself to slip down into that vast warm caressing body. That great mother. But the ghosts were unrelenting. Swim, they insisted. Swim. Swim. Swim!
And I swam.
I discovered how to pull energy from the sea, to draw on it instead of letting it draw on me, and I swam toward shore with steady strokes now. Never pausing. Never faltering. I gained in strength with each stroke. How could I let myself die here? There was so much for me yet to do! Life was calling to me. Swim, Yakoub! Live, Yakoub!
I saw a colossal tree growing right at the edge of the sea. Its roots were deep down in the sea-bed and its trunk, a vast white shaft streaked with strands of pale purple, rose swift and straight for a hundred meters or two, not branching at all except at the top. I think the tree was sea-stuff too, for its enormous crown, spreading like a huge umbrella and casting a giant blue shadow, was in constant metamorphosis. Eyes, faces, coiled serpents, long fluttering leaves, fiercely beating wings, cool flickering flames, everything swarming, writhing, changing, nothing the same for two seconds in a row. I thought that one of the faces I saw was that of Focale, but it came and went too quickly for me to be certain.