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The A’rak

by Michael Shea

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or

incidents is purely coincidental.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-671-31947-7

Cover art by Gary Ruddell

First printing, October 2000

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Typeset by Brilliant Press

Printed in the United States of America

To my dearly beloved

Linda, Della, and Jake

BAEN BOOKS by Michael Shea

The Incompleat Nifft

SHAG MARGOLD’S

PREFACE TO

THE A’RAK

One densely foggy morning not many months before the events here recorded, the witch Gnarl-Bone

the Bearded walked along the rocky shore of her native Strega. She was attended by two of her

myrmidames who were, shortly, to assist in her conveyance, for Gnarl-Bone purposed to go seeking

something which her researches—researches prosecuted over several decades—had at last persuaded her

lay not far off.

Strega is the westernmost isle of the Astrygal Island Chain, and while witches in their varied collegia,

cloisters, bibliotroves and incunabularia have dominated most of the islands time out of mind, it is on

Strega in particular that the sisterhood’s greatest archivists have founded their fastnesses. Strega is the

Lore-hoard of the Astrygals, and is, in consequence, home to the Lore’s most potent adepts. And among

these gathered prodigies, Gnarl-Bone is, by any reckoning, among the two or three Preeminents.

Indeed, this search towards whose conclusion she now bestrode the surf-scoured shingle (with a

visage—always fierce—contorted by hope to a near demon-ferocity)—this search had been stimulated by

clues which, to any other eyes than hers, would have been mere fragments of enigma: a couplet from an

obscure Angrian epode seven thousand lines in length; a half dozen words of digression in Skatagary’s

mad, visionary Geophobion ; a never previously noticed inconsistency in Punktil’s Digitary of Dead Stars .

These had individually (let alone the connection between them) eluded the greatest scholars; in greater

Gnarl-Bone, they had sparked the hope of a priceless acquisition, and on this misty, moisty Stregan

morning she marched, in a rage of suspenseful eagerness, either to embrace her prize, or to know herself

deluded these long years.

“Here!” she boomed, midway across a surf-lashed cove of shingle. She faced the sea, and her

myrmidames crouched ready at her either side. She and they marched into the breakers’ foamy onslaught,

trudging stolidly out until, waist-deep, Gnarl-Bone made a peremptory gesture at the next incoming wave.

The obedient billow surged up to a great height, and, just as it neared the trio, arched over their heads and

back around them, enveloping them in a great bubble. Now they strode offshore within this air-globe, the

myrmidames dropping to all fours to trundle it forward along the seafloor at their mistress’ direction. As

their sphere sank under the surface, the sorceress with a second gesture filled it with light, which spilled

out far beyond their vehicle in all directions, and draped in brilliance the seafloor’s weedy, undulous

terrain.

Gnarl-Bone stood on air, thoughtfully stroking her tattered beard, directing her dog-trotting minions

now here, now there. These two dames, with not four centuries of age between them, were mere pups

beside their venerable mistress, but still they found it toilsome negotiating the history-strewn slopes and

ravines of the circum-Stregan sea-bottom. The Astrygals have fought off more than one invasion (many of

these from the air) and the seafloors round those isles are crowded with the hulks and bones of beaten

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