"About five hundred years ago," Geo explained, "all the rituals of the G.o.ddess Argo were destroyed. A completely new set were initiated into the temple practices. All references to them were destroyed also, and with them, much of Leptar's history. Stories have it that the rituals and incantations were too powerful. But this is just a guess, and most priests are very uncomfortable about speculating."

"That was after the Great Fire?" Urson asked.

"Nearly a thousand years after," Geo said.

"It must have been a Great Fire indeed if ashes from it are still falling from the wombs of healthy women." He looked down at Snake. "Is it true that a drop of your blood in vinegar will cure gout? If one of you kisses a female baby, will she have only girl children?" He laughed.

"You know those are only tales," Geo said.

"There used to be a one with two heads that sat outside the Blue Tavern and spun a top all day. It was an idiot, though. But the dwarfs and the legless ones that wheel about the city and do tricks, they are clever.

But strange, and quiet, usually."

"You oaf," chided Geo, "you could be one too. How many men do you know who reach your size and strength by normal means?"

"You're a crazy liar," said Urson. Then he scrunched his eyebrows together in thought, and at last shrugged. "Well anyway, I never heard of one who could hear what you thought. It would make me uncomfortable walking down the street." He looked down at Snake between his legs. "Can you all do that?"

Snake, from the middle bunk, shook his head. Urson stretched out on his back, but then suddenly looked over the edge of the berth toward Geo.

"Hey, Geo, what about those little baubles she had. Do you know what they are?"

"No, I don't," Geo said. "But she was concerned over them enough." He looked up over the bunk bottom between himself and Urson. "Snake, will you give me another look at that thing?"

Snake held out the thong and the jewel.

"Where did you get it?" Urson asked. "Oh, never mind. I guess we learn that when we go to sleep."

Geo reached for it, but Snake's one hand closed and three others sprang around it. "I wasn't going to take it," explained Geo. "I just wanted to see."

Suddenly the door of the forecastle opened, and the tall mate was silhouetted against the brighter light behind him. "Poet," he called.

"She wants to see you." Then he was gone.

Geo looked at the other two, shrugged, and then swung off the berth, made his way up the steps and into the hall.

On deck it was completely dark. As he walked, a door before him opened and a blade of illumination sliced the deck. He jumped.

"Come in," summoned the Priestess of Argo, and he turned into a windowless cabin and stopped one step beyond the threshold. The walls rippled tapestries, lucent green, scarlet. Golden braziers perched on tapering legged tripods beneath plumes of pale blue smoke that lent thin incense in the room, pierced faintly but cleanly into his nostrils like knives. Light lashed the polished wooden newels of a great bed on which sat swirls of silk, damasked satin, brocade. A huge desk, cornered with wooden eagles, was spread with papers, meticulous instruments of cartography, s.e.xtants, rules, compa.s.ses, and great shabby books were piled on one corner. Above, from the beamed ceiling, hung by thick chains, swayed a branching candelabra of oil cups, some in the hands of demons, the mouths of monkeys, burning in the bellies of nymphs, or between the horns of satyrs' heads--red, clear green, or yellow-white.

"Come in," repeated the priestess. "Close the door."

Geo obeyed.

She walked behind her desk, sat down, and folded her hands in front of her veiled face. "What do you know of the real world, outside Leptar?"

"That there is much water, some land, and mostly ignorance."

"What tales have you heard from your bear friend, Urson? He is a traveled man and should know some of what there is of the earth."

"The stories of sailors," said Geo, "are menageries of beasts that no one has ever seen, of lands for which no maps exist, and of peoples whom no man has met."

She smiled. "Since I boarded this ship I have heard many tales from sailors, and I have learned more from them than from all my priests.

You, on the docks there, this evening, have been the only man to give me another sc.r.a.p of the puzzle except a few drunken seamen, misremembering old fantasies." She paused. "What do you know of the jewels you saw tonight?"

"Nothing, ma'am."

"A common thief hiding on the docks had one; I, a priestess of Argo, possess another; and if you had one, you would probably exchange it for a kiss with some tavern maid. What do you know of the G.o.d Hama?"

"I know of no such G.o.d."

"You," she said, "who can spout all the rituals and incantations of the white G.o.ddess Argo, you do not even know the name of the dark G.o.d Hama.

What do you know of the Island of Aptor?"

"Nothing, ma'am."

"This boat has been to Aptor once and now will return again. Ask your ignorant friend the Bear to tell you tales of Aptor; and blind, wise poet, you will laugh, and probably he will, too. But I will tell you: his tales, his legends, and his fantasies are not a t.i.the of the truth, not a t.i.the. Perhaps you will be no help after all. I am thinking of dismissing you."

"But, ma'am ..." Geo began.

The priestess looked up, having been about to begin some work.

Geo regained himself. "Ma'am, what can you tell me about these things?

You have scattered only crumbs. I have extensive knowledge of incantation, poetry, magic, and I know these concern your problem. Give me what information you have, and I will be able to render mine in full.

I am familiar with many sailors' tales. True, none of Aptor, or Hama, but I may be able to collate fragments. I have learned the legends and jargon of thieves through a broad life; this is more than your priests have, I'll wager. I have had teachers who were afraid to touch books I have opened. And I fear no secret you might hold."

"No, you are not afraid," admitted the priestess. "You are honorable, and foolish--and a poet. I hope the first and last will wipe out the middle one in time. Nevertheless, I will tell you some." She stood up now, and drew out a map.

"Here is Leptar," she pointed to one island. Then her finger moved over water to another. "This is Aptor. Now you know as much about it as any ordinary person in Leptar might. Aptor is a barbaric land, uncivilized.

Yet they occasionally show some insidious organization. Tell me, what legends of the Great Fire have you heard?"

"I know that beasts are supposed to have come from the sea and destroyed the world's harbors, and that birds spat fire from the sky."

"The older sailors," said the priestess, "will tell you that these were beasts and birds of Aptor. Of course, there is fifteen hundred years of retelling and distortion in a tradition never written down, and perhaps Aptor has simply become a synonym for everything evil, but these stories still give you some idea. Chronicles, which only three or four people have had access to, tell me that once five hundred years ago, the forces of Aptor actually attempted to invade Leptar. The references to it are vague. I do not know how far it went nor how successful it was, but its methods were insidious and very unlike any invasion you may have read of in history. So unlike, that records of it were destroyed, and no mention of it is made in the histories given to school children.

"Only recently have I had a chance to learn how strange and inhuman they were. And I have good reason to believe that the forces of Aptor are congealing once more, a sluggish but huge amoeba of horror. Once fully awake, once launched, it will be irrevocable. Tendrils have reached into us for the past few years, probed, and then withdrawn before they were recognized. Sometimes they dealt catastrophic blows to the center of Leptar's government and religion. All this has been a.s.siduously kept from the people. I have been sent to clear perhaps just one more veil from our ignorance. And if you can help me in that, you are welcome."

"What of the jewels, and of Hama?" inquired Geo. "Is he a G.o.d of Aptor under whom these forces are being marshaled? And are these jewels sacred to him in some way?"

"Both are true, and both are not true enough," replied the priestess.

"And one more thing. You say the last attempted invasion by Aptor into Leptar was five hundred years ago? It was five hundred years ago that the religion of Argo in Leptar purged all her rituals and inst.i.tuted new ones. Was there some connection between the invasion and the purge?"

"I am sure of it," declared the priestess. "But I do not know what it is. However, let me now tell you the story of the jewels. The one I wear at my neck was captured, somehow, from Aptor during that first invasion.

That we captured it may well be the reason that we are still a free nation today. Since then it has been guarded carefully in the temple of the G.o.ddess Argo, its secrets well protected, along with those few chronicles which mention the invasion, which ended, incidentally, only a month before the purges. Then, about a year ago, a small h.o.a.rd of horror reached our sh.o.r.e from Aptor. I cannot describe it. I did not see any of what transpired. But they made their way inland, and managed to kidnap Argo herself."

"You mean Argo incarnate? The highest priestess?"

"Yes. Each generation, as you know, the youngest daughter of the past generation's highest priestess is chosen as the living incarnation of the white G.o.ddess Argo. She is reared and taught by the wisest priests and priestesses. Her youngest daughter, when she dies, becomes Argo. At any rate, she was kidnaped. One of the a.s.sailants was hacked down; instantly it decayed, rotted on the floor of the convent corridor. But from the putrescent ma.s.s of flesh, we salvaged a second jewel from Aptor. And before it died, it was heard to utter the lines I quoted to you before. So, I have been sent then, to find what I can of the enemy, and to rescue or to find the fate of my sister."

"I will do whatever I can," said Geo, "to help save Leptar and to discover the whereabouts of your sister priestess."