The Luck of Brin's Five by Cherry; Wilder Page A

knows?” Mamor had come to warm up and talk. “They’re hardy outcasts. Perhaps some escaped.”
    â€œWhat is the first finder’s charge?” asked Diver. No one liked to tell him.
    Brin sighed. “Dorn,” she said, “you were very brave, but the charge may never be complete.” I agreed.
    â€œThe first finders are charged, according to the old threads, to deliver any curse or blessing in a death-pact skein,” she explained.
    â€œTo blazes with that!” said Mamor. “The child has done more than enough. Don’t put ideas in his head.”
    â€œDon’t worry,” I said. “I hope I never get within offering distance of Tiath Gargan.”
    The full darkness was slipping away, and I was suddenly bone weary, as if I had climbed Hingstull. I fumbled my way into the sleeping bag and fell deeply asleep before Old Gwin had finished brewing me a herb drink. I dreamed that a brown bird, a night-caller, sat on our tent by day, and I knew, in my dream, that it was Odd-Eye, our old Luck. I told him all was well with us and the new Luck he had found for us was the best in all the world. Then the dream dissolved; I woke once, and the barge was still not under way. Narneen, half in the sleeping bag, was peering through a slit in the deck tent, and I joined her. Outside in the silvery light of the far sun I saw figures moving on the west bank; Mamor and Diver and the Harper were digging in the sand, laying the dead to rest. I slept again and did not dream; by the time I woke, we were far downstream. The bird-boat had been towed out of the channel and moored in a marshy inlet, among the mud-trees.
    The broad stream stretched before us; it was the third day, and I felt as if I had spent all my life on the river. Yet I was troubled, and so were the rest; I could not get the image of the death-bound ancients out of my mind. The looms clacked slowly in the tent; Narneen had fits of weeping; Mamor cursed invisible shoals. Diver sat amidships with the Harper, trying to master the knots of the woven symbols with a practice skein. The fine weather that had echoed our happiness turned round now that we were downcast. It was gray and chill at midday; we passed one or two small craft travelling upstream.
    In the distance, on the west bank, there was a break in the thick groves of willow and mud-trees: a larger town, Wellin, the last place we must pass before Whiterock Fold. Idly, at the rail, I lobbed a fish spine at an odd blue piece of flotsam, then felt my skin dimple with cold as I realized what it was. I shouted, and Mamor held down the sweep. I crossed the deck to stand with Diver and the Harper as the body of the dead twirler was borne slowly past.
    â€œGreat Wind!” breathed Roy. “There was some sense in that death-skein.”
    Diver brought out his glass; it looked like a light-tube, but he could draw it out to twice the length. It had a lens inside to make distant things look closer; Mamor said that such things were made in Rintoul and the Fire-Town to guide sailors on the Great Ocean Sea. Diver scanned the stream ahead and the landing stage at Wellin, his face darkening. He handed the glass to the Harper, who took one look and went to Mamor.
    â€œWhat is it?” I tugged Diver by the sleeve. His blue eyes rested on me.
    â€œA black barge,” he said, “moored at this place ahead. Some grandee. . . .”
    Already I knew which one. “Pentroy?”
    â€œThere are three knots on the sail.”
    Mamor altered course to the east bank and presently, when we saw a little wicker crossing-boat approaching, he sent us all into the tent. We heard him hail the solitary rower.
    â€œWhat doings in Wellin, friend?” We were huddled together, beside Brin, at the loom; the voice came thinly over the water.
    â€œ. . . assize . . .”
    â€œGreat Wind save us!” Mamor was shocked, or pretended to be. “Thought I saw a drowned spirit