The Island Under the Earth by Avram Davidson Read Free Book Online Page A

the merchants dug grooves into a table-top — or, if upon a trading voyage to a place where no such convenience obtained, simply squatted upon a bale on a beach or a riverbank and scored the grooves in the sand with a stick or forefinger: a groove for ones, a groove for sixes, a groove for twelves — set down his colored pebbles and moved them up and moved them down:
click:
a snowy hind’s-skin …
click:
a six of skins …
click
… a dozen. So many sacks of spelt, so many sacks of pelt, such a number of quills of dust-of-gold, such a number of thin-scraped goats-horns full of gold seeds —
    Click. Click. Clicket-a-click
.
    “Sight Leviathan? Hear Rahab?”
    “No, Merchant. Didn’t neither. Heard a doctor say Star-flux was soonly due, but didn’t see, didn’t hear. Doctor’s’ll say anything. Brought some nice aromatic gum this time.” He was bow-legged and broadbellied, with a beard like the great-grandfather of all goats. The second captain was little better than a lad, with a line of carefully trimmed pussydown along his jaws.
    “How much?”
    “Seven kids.”
    Click
. A pause.
Click. A
house-girl passed in with water, and the younger captain’s eyes roved and he moved from one leg to another like a boy who has to go behind a bush.
    “Your passenger biding, or can we take him south when the
Dolphin
goes?”
    “Didn’t say.”
    So it went, a phrase of talk, a click. Here it was common as breath, but afar and afar the savages gaped, scratched their armpits and their crotches, loosed … for whole moments … their grips on clubs and spears.
Merchants’ magic
— thus, their term for the arithmetic of the talley-stones. But sometimes bemusement turned into an intenser suspicion, particularly if explanation of a fall in the price of their own wares had been insufficiently assimilated. Merchants’ magic! What color had this magic? Then a fist with grime set hard into its knuckles might tighten … a look … a head of goat-tangled locks toss back … a grunt … a roar of rage …
    Blood amidst the spilt wine, then, on the barren beach.
    Blood upon the talley-pebbles by the riverbank.

Chapter Eleven
    The senior captain had finished presenting his accounts and had seen his cargo stowed away and had received his wage and share. The junior captain raised one foot, ready to step forward and get on with it, but still the elder didn’t move. First he scratched his head, then he winkled his forefingers in his ears, then he ran them through his beard. “They say the Cap of Grace is on the move again.” The merchant looked at him with politely raised eyebrows, but the eyes beneath them strayed to the customary “little gift” which the captain had just laid upon his desk: a small packet of soft leather, bulging at one end. Tabnath Lo was not about to open it yet.
    “Ah, wouldn’t that be a fine thing, if it came this side?”
    “Indeed.”
    “There wasn’t none of this denying and lying and false weights and violences, when the Old Queen was in her tower, you know. (“No, indeed.”) Fair weather, good winds, cheap buying and dear selling, seamen knew their place and the sixies stayed where they was meant to; no flux and no pox, and if a man couldn’t find justice he only had to go to the Tower and ask for it. Ah …”
    Tabnath Lo blinked only once. He said, “The wine-house has a few new girls from up south, and the word is that they haven’t all been tapped yet.”
    The stout sea-captain (his name was Clarb something, or something Clarb) pulled his nose. “Wine…. Yes. I shouldn’t mind a jug or two. Well, then, Merchant, you know where to find me. Good venturing. — See you, sonny.” — this to the junior; and left.
    Tabnath Lo looked at the junior sea-captain quietly. Just as quietly he asked, “Do you think your passenger will be moving south on the
Dolphin
or will he bide?”
    “Didn’t say.”
    This time the look he got was longer. The young man forgot to fidgit. The merchant dropped