Stargate by Pauline Gedge Page A

little, astonished.
    â€œNo, lord, of course not! You know that I cannot enter when you are away at council.”
    â€œWell, what is it, then?”
    Sillix’s webbed fingers touched his arm again, a brush of reassurance, a tentative, soft caress. “The fish are not right, Ixelion. I cannot say exactly what I mean, but they are washed up on the sands and do not move. We cannot eat them. They do not taste right.”
    Ixelion felt as though a cool, foreign hand had curved itself around his heart. Swiftly he scanned the divided, meandering river, the fog-clothed, flower-heavy forest, the tips of his towers, and the odd dull glint of diffused light on the half-hidden houses of the people. His eyes encountered nothing strange, nothing new. But he was conscious of change as his glance returned to Sillix’s trusting, relieved face. It was in the air, in the water, dissolving with the mist, unfolding with the colorless, complex blooms, a dullness, a tinge of weariness. It was within himself. Terror filled him, became one with the change, became another new emotion, despair. He did not as yet savor it slowly, in self-pity. He stalked warily around it in his mind, suspicious, afraid, winds of past and future tugging drearily at him. I have done nothing! he protested silently. I have protected the council, I have saved Janthis and the others from the danger of destruction! I, Ixelion, have done this great, this noble thing!
    Suddenly he became aware that he was glaring deep into Sillix’s eyes. “Very well,” he said with effort. “I will come and see the fish. They are sick, Sillix.”
    â€œSick, sun-lord?”
    Ixelion tore his gaze from the uncomprehending, dumb beauty of Sillix’s rain-drenched face. “Show me,” he ordered, and followed Sillix toward the forest and the ocean beyond.
    The fish were lying on the broad sweep of the beach, cast up by the tide among the untidy streamers of dark seaweed. There were not many, a scattering of still, glinting shapes, but Ixelion could smell them long before he bent, and out where the ocean rocked toward the sand he saw more of them floating quietly, unresisting, waiting to be thrown up in their turn. Sillix stood by as Ixelion lifted one of them. The pale eye flicked once, the fish flapped in his hand and then lay motionless, dying. Ixelion placed it gently back on the sand and straightened.
    â€œWhat of the rivers?” he asked brusquely.
    Sillix stepped to him, and Ixelion again felt his need to touch, to be comforted. “The fish of the rivers are as they were, also the fish out in the depths where my son dives. It is only these, close in to the shore. The small ones. What shall we do?”
    â€œBury them in the sand, and keep burying until no more are left by the tide. It is nothing, Sillix, a moment of imbalance, that is all. Have you eaten any?”
    â€œWe tried, but they tasted sour. Is the seaweed good?”
    Suddenly Ixelion was overwhelmed by an urge to shout into the innocent face, to see shock in the bland, trusting eyes, but he struggled with his panic, his teeth clenched, his eyes on the fish at his feet.
    â€œYes, the seaweed is good,” he answered. “Do what I tell you now, and don’t eat any more of them. I must go.”
    Sillix reached out for the sun-disc lying on Ixelion’s breast, but Ixelion had already swung away. Sillix’s webbed hand dropped to his side, and he watched Ixelion disappear under the forest’s dripping eaves, dragging yellow shreds of sunlight behind him.
    The water flowing out the doors of the palace was silky-cold and dark, and the hall was filled with green gloom. Ixelion stood on the threshold and shivered, listening to the voice of Ixel as he had never listened before. Even the fogs murmur, he said to himself. The flowers creak open, displaying their limp, pallid petals. The trees and vines suck at the sloppy soil with wet, greedy words. My hair squeaks