The Merman's Children by Poul Anderson Page A

boatload!” Tauno sagged back. “And we have not even a boat.”
    Ingeborg smiled sadly and ran fingers along his arm. “No man wins every game,” she murmured. “You’ve done what you could. Let your sister spend threescore years in denying her flesh, and afterward forever in unfolding her soul. She may remember us, when you are dust and I am burning.”
    Tauno shook his head. His eyelids squinched together. “No…she bears the same blood as I…it’s not a restful blood…she’s shy and gentle, but she was born to the freedom of the world’s wide seas…if holiness curdles in her, during a lifetime among whisker-chinned crones, what of her chances at Heaven?”
    â€œI know not, I know not.”
    â€œAn unforced choice, at least. To buy it, a boatload of gold. A couple of wretched tons, to buy Yria’s welfare.”
    â€œTons! Why—I hadn’t thought—less than that, surely. A few hundred pounds ought to be ample.” Eagerness touched Ingeborg. “Do you suppose you could find that much?”
    â€œHm…wait. Wait. Let me hark back——” Tauno sat bolt upright. “Yes!” he shouted. “I do know!”
    â€œWhere? How?”
    With the mercury quickness of Faerie, he became a planner. “Long ago was a city of men on an island in midocean,” he said, not loud but shiveringly, while he stared into the shadows. “Great it was, and gorged with riches. Its god was a kraken. They cast down weighted offerings to him—treasure, that he cared not about, but with it kine, horses, condemned evildoers; and these the kraken could eat. He need not snatch aught else than a whale now and then—or a ship, to devour its crew, and over the centuries he and his priests had learned the signals which told him that such-and-such vessels were unwanted at Averom…So the kraken grew sluggish, and appeared not for generations of men; nor was there any need, since outsiders dared no longer attack.
    â€œIn time the islanders themselves came to doubt he was more than a fable. Meanwhile a new folk had arisen on the mainland. Their traders came, bearing not goods alone, but gods who didn’t want costly sacrifices. The people of Averorn flocked to these new gods. The temple of the kraken stood empty, its fires burned out, its priests died and were not replaced. Finally the king of the city ordered an end to the rites that kept him fed.
    â€œAfter one year, dreadful in his hunger, the kraken rose from the sea bottom; and he sank the harbored ships, and his arms reached inland to knock down toers and pluck forth prey. Belike he also had power over quake and volcano—for the island was whelmed, it foundered and is forgotten by all humankind.”
    â€œWhy, that is wonderful!” Ingeborg clapped her hands, not thinking at once of the small children who had gone down with the city. “Oh, I’m so glad!”
    â€œIt’s not that wonderful,” Tauno said. “The merfolk remember Averorn because the kraken lairs there yet. They give it a wide berth.”
    â€œI—I see. You must, though, bear some hope if you——”
    â€œYes. Worth trying. Look you, woman: Men cannot go undersea. Merfolk have no ships, nor metal weapons that don’t soon corrode away. Never have the races worked together. If they did—maybe——”
    Ingeborg was a long time quiet before she said, almost not to be heard, “And maybe you’d be slain.”
    â€œYes, yes. What is that? Everybody’s born fey. My people stand close—they must—and a single life is of no high account among us. How could I range off to the ends of the world, knowing I had not done what I might for my little sister Yria who looks like my mother?” Tauno gnawed his lip. “But the ship, how to get the ship and crew?”
    They talked back and forth, she trying to steer him from his