Heriot (19 page)

‘
T
ime!’ said Heriot. ‘It doesn’t give up, does it?’

‘One moment little, the next big,’ said Cayley in his husky damaged voice. ‘Me that is, not you. You’ve always been big.’

‘Neither of us has ever been as big as we are now,’ Heriot said. ‘Are you off to fight somewhere? Fight! Fight! Fight! That’s all you think of.’

‘I’m working out with Voicey Landis,’ Cayley said. ‘I’m his favourite and it’s not just being big and strong. I’m – what’s that word? I’m agile. That means
quick
,’ he added, proud of a new word. ‘The ones that are even stronger than me, they dive in to strike me. Down comes the sword but – hey – I’m already over there, and spinning in from the side.’ He mimed a graceful movement. ‘I’m strong enough, but quickness, that’s my skill. And I work at it more than most.’

‘I know,’ said Heriot. ‘When I ask you to tidy our shed you always say you’ve got to practise.’

‘Oh, that!’ said Cayley. ‘Well,
you
don’t tidy. You just crouch by the King, telling him who means well and who doesn’t.’

‘That’s my work,’ Heriot said. ‘That, and spreading a bit of fantasy around when the King has noble guests.’ But as he spoke his expression became remote. Over and over again, with every new day, the old questions still worked through him. The world around him seemed to thrill with intention, but he
somehow knew he wasn’t being what he was intended to be.

‘Do you tell him about Betony Hoad?’ asked Cayley.

‘I don’t have to,’ Heriot said. ‘Anyone can read the Prince. The King can. Lord Glass can. Betony Hoad wants to be marvellous beyond anyone else – even when he’s King it won’t be enough for him. He’d like to be a Magician too, but being a Magician is something you’re born to, like me.’ He sighed. ‘Be noble! Be strong! Whatever! Being a Magician isn’t something you can win.’

‘Then off you go, and get on with the work you were born to, and I’ll get to mine,’ said Cayley. ‘If I don’t see you tomorrow I’ll see you the next day.’

Heriot walked through the orchard, across one echoing courtyard, then another, up a short flight of stairs, choosing to enter the castle through its kitchens where the cooks and butlers, the butchers, cleaners and other people who lavished care and attention on the halls and chambers of the castle, greeted him with a certain caution, but with friendship too. He was the Magician of Hoad, but he understood their work. There had even been occasions when he had joined them, scrubbing platters and benches, listening to the castle gossip and gossiping in return. Moments like this gave him a homely feeling. But today he simply grinned and waved and walked on, climbed other, grander stairs and came into a lobby whose stone walls were softened by tapestries. Suddenly he found himself confronted by Dysart.

‘You’re late,’ said Dysart. ‘The Lords of the Islands are here already.’

‘They’re early,’ said Heriot. ‘And I hope they don’t talk too much, I’m tired of their conversation.’

‘It’s all useful to me,’ Dysart said. ‘Linnet and I get together to exchange notes.’

‘You two!’ Heriot said. ‘Why don’t you just marry and settle down?’

‘It’s her father,’ Dysart said. ‘He wants her to marry Luce, because he thinks Betony and his wife won’t have children, and one day there might be the chance for Linnet to be Queen of Hoad. But Luce won’t agree to marry because …’ His voice faded. He looked around almost as if he thought the walls might turn treacherous.

‘Because Luce thinks that he will challenge Carlyon and become Hero,’ said Heriot. ‘And though the Hero mustn’t marry, he can probably have any woman he chooses.’

Dysart looked up and down the hall through which they were now striding. When he spoke it was almost in a whisper. ‘Things like that are meant to be muttered out in your orchard, not shouted between these walls. Someone might listen to the echoes. So let’s talk about these Lords from the Islands. My father doesn’t trust them. The Islands are restless, though what they would do if they broke away from Hoad I don’t know. Go back to fishing, I suppose.’

For the rest of the morning Heriot sat at the King’s elbow, listening to requests for money and attention registered by the Lords. The King leaned back in his throne, which seemed to wind itself around him, holding him in an embrace of gold and crimson becoming not simply a place for him to sit, but a frame for him. On his right hand Betony yawned visibly, worrying his thumb nail in between yawns. On his left sat Luce, staring at Carlyon. When at last the Island Lords retreated, bowing and smiling, the King turned, not towards his son, but towards Heriot. Heriot recognised the summons in the King’s glance. He took a deep breath and stepped forward.

‘Well, Magician! Were they speaking the truth?’

Heriot moved restlessly, hating this question, which was one he had to answer over and over again.

‘Mostly they spoke the truth, Your Majesty. I’m not perfect in the way I read minds but …’

‘You tell us that every day,’ the King said. ‘Forget your shortcomings. Use your skills to give what impressions you can.’

‘There was a lot they didn’t tell,’ said Heriot. He hesitated. ‘They’ve had a noble from the Dannorad staying on Cresca with Lord Summel and they talked about their old relationship I think, but I can’t be sure. And the image of Lord Summel was moving in all their minds, like a spirit swimming in wave after wave.’

Heriot heard a curious murmur of fulfilled suspicion scuttling around the room as he spoke. Lord Summel was a hero in the Islands but a declared enemy of Hoad.

‘They protected themselves as well as they could,’ he added. ‘These days they try to train the men who sit in front of Your Majesty to present blank minds to your Magician.’

‘Do you think the Lords of the Islands are plotting to change their loyalty?’ the King asked.

Once again Heriot hesitated. Then he sighed. ‘It’s dancing in their minds.’

‘Ah!’ said the King. ‘We will think about this.’ He turned away from Heriot, looking to Carlyon and murmuring to him inaudibly, while Heriot moved back to stand beside Dysart again. The King looked out into the room. ‘The day’s business is concluded,’ he announced.

The Lords of his Council began to stand, but suddenly a clear voice cut into the air of the council room. ‘Your Majesty! Your Magnificence, Lord Carlyon, Hero of Hoad.’

Every head in the room turned, Luce had not only risen from his chair, but had stepped forward to stand in front of Carlyon. Carlyon, at once alert, looked up at him with a smile that suggested he already knew just what Luce was about to say.

The King looked at Luce and inclined his head gravely. ‘Speak on!’ he said with curious cool formality, Heriot thought,
for though it was indeed a formal occasion, the King was speaking to his son.

‘The time has come,’ Luce announced with a formality of his own. ‘I put forward a challenge to Lord Carlyon. I challenge him to an encounter on Cassio’s Island. I challenge him …’

But Carlyon interrupted him.

‘I accept the challenge of Prince Luce,’ he said briskly, somehow reducing the challenge to an irritating request. ‘We will fight on Cassio’s Island according to ancient traditions …’ and then he added, ‘Whether I win or lose I will enjoy the occasion. Mine is a still life and I long for the variety of action.’

Luce looked taken aback by the speed of Carlyon’s reply. His mouth hung open slightly as he glanced from Carlyon to his father.

Once again the King inclined his head. ‘A challenge has been made. A challenge has been accepted. This evening the challenge will be announced and celebrated in the Tower of the Lion.’

Heriot was released. He was a free man for a few hours and he made for his orchard, feeling the day reaching towards him. He would lie on his back perhaps, looking into the sky. He might read. He might slide through that hidden gap in the wall and wander between the stalls of the Second Ring. He might, just for a little time …

But Cayley was suddenly beside him once more, startling him with such a sudden appearance.

‘Made you jump!’ he said with satisfaction.

‘It’s funny,’ Heriot said. ‘I can feel everyone else creeping up on me, but mostly I can’t feel you.’

‘I’ve learned to shut myself in,’ Cayley said in his wandering but mysterious way. ‘Things happened to me back a bit and I had to close myself down tight. I taught myself how. It was that or dying. So! No choice! Anyhow, was it interesting sitting in there and gossiping with Kings and Heroes?’

‘It was interesting today,’ Heriot said. ‘Luce challenged the Hero. Well, we’ve known for some time he was planning to, but …’

And then he fell silent. Cayley might have shut himself in, but suddenly something was leaking out from him. He was angry; he was, perhaps, frightened. Heriot looked closely at him. ‘Why should you care?’ he asked.

‘Who says I do care?’ Cayley replied in his usual light-hearted voice, and as he spoke Heriot could feel him closing in on himself, growing unreadable once more.

‘It jumped from your mind into mine,’ Heriot replied. ‘I could feel you growing fierce at the news.’

‘You’re not always right,’ said Cayley.

Heriot said nothing, but knew he hadn’t imagined that furious, inner alarm Cayley had betrayed. Perhaps he could have pursued it, but then he thought, people are entitled to their secrets. It may be the Magician’s job to winkle out secrets in the King’s throne room, but beyond, in the city, secrets can be secrets, hidden and unviolated.

A
month after Luce's challenge a glowing worm of colour began writhing slowly through the great rings of Diamond, then beyond the city along the open road. The King and his entire court, together with envoys and ambassadors from the Dannorad and Camp Hyot, set out in a formal parade along a road that had been cleared and widened and decorated with coloured poles and banners in anticipation of the royal progress. The King, mounted on a white horse, rode at the head of the procession. Betony Hoad and his doll-wife rode on the King's right, Luce at his left, while directly behind him came Dysart, together with the Master of Hagen, the Lords of Argo, Dante, Bay, Isman, Doro, and Glass, along with their families.

Linnet of Hagen rode beside her father. Heriot Tarbas, the Magician of Hoad, rode beside Prince Dysart, for in a curious way their friendship expressed the power of the King. Behind them came the lesser Lords with their wives and sons, attended by ranks of guards and servants, and among this lesser crowd rode the Magician's servant Cayley, the transformed rat of the city, staring around him intently, occasionally smiling his vivid smile, as if in following this road he were remembering a story he had been told as a child – a story he knew well. They were bound for Cassio's Island, where Prince and Hero were to fight. Within two days, one would be dead.

Some members of the procession talked to one another as they rode, but for the most part the riders were curiously silent, many of them tied into themselves with thoughts and speculations. The silence became part of the ceremonial progress between the city and Cassio's Island, yet somehow it was as if the thoughts of men and women sang in the air, not as words but as strange vibrations felt but not recognised.

At last! Luce was thinking. At last I'll become what I was born to be. And when I'm set up on Cassio's Island I'll remake the world. I'll change the rules. The Dannorad will fall into line. Camp Hyot will bow down before Hoad. Who knows? Betony doesn't want to be King. He might step back and … and I might even merge the King and the Hero into one man again.

A breeze crept in from the sea and lifted the golden curls on his forehead. Dysart, staring sideways, saw them stir as if gentle but determined fingers were twisting themselves in his brother's hair.
Luce must win
, he was thinking. He must. It's not just that I want to be King after my father, but if Luce wins, I win in every way. If Luce becomes Hero he moves off to one side in a glory of his own, and I'll be the next in line for Linnet. And then another voice – a vagrant from some dark and unacknowledged part of his mind whispered slyly, But even if Luce dies I'll still move up a step. I'll become the second son of the King. Either way I'll win. He recoiled in his saddle, shying away violently from this thought, which had become almost immediately an unwelcome yet indissoluble part of a profound longing.

It's not enough! Betony Hoad was thinking. Nothing is enough. Look at this display, this charade. Look at all this posturing, this game they're playing, this pretence of true wonder. Of course death has excitement, but this will be death carefully arranged, death reduced, made tedious. I don't care who kills who. Somewhere there are things wonderful beyond all
dreaming. But where are they? Why am I shut away from them? Why do I have to waste time watching these gesturing puppets? I want to be remade. I don't want to be merely the sign of the sun. I want to be the sun itself.

Heriot was thinking too, remembering another time. Funny how well I remember it, seeing it's not a thing I
want
to remember. I struggled along this road, bleeding, thinking there was no place for me … there would never be a place for me. But now I have a place. I live in an orchard with a family of one. It's not my first place, but it's come to be a true place. Yet I still don't know just what it
means
to be a Magician. I know how I'm used in Diamond but I know that's misuse of what I could be … what I ought to be. Somehow I'm being reduced. When I was a child, a baby, Izachel got into my head and tore me apart and I've never worked the way I'm meant to work. Somewhere out there I have a true meaning … These thoughts faded away when he saw they had reached the ancient aqueduct, built and broken long before, back in the days when his people, the Gethin and the Orts, were Hoad's only inhabitants.

That curve of water! he thought. It's still like a question mark, asking me something, but until I know what it's asking, there's no way I can answer.

The sound of the falling water advanced to meet the passing riders as it gushed endlessly through the ancient channel of stone, as it sighed through the air then burst furiously towards the river far below, applauding its return home.

The procession moved on, made up of many people, yet moving like a single thing with a single life of its own.

The King turned to Betony Hoad. His movement was smooth and practised yet for all that there was something slightly uneasy about it. ‘You must enjoy this splendour,' he said, and once again there was something awkward in his simple comment … an advance uncertain of how it would be
received. ‘It's the sort of thing you take pleasure in.' Once again he was both stating something, yet asking a question.

‘If I must, I must,' said Betony Hoad.

Hoad raised his eyebrows. ‘You don't enjoy it?' he asked, more directly this time.

‘It's a children's game,' Betony said. ‘I was thinking, as you spoke, Lord Father, that I was longing for something much more – oh,
much
more extreme than this.'

‘Your brother's life is in the balance,' the King pointed out. ‘Surely that is an extremity.'

‘It's what he's chosen,' Betony said. ‘I long for something beyond arrangement and choice.'

‘You want to be an elemental?'

Betony didn't look at his father. He laughed.

‘Being King is perhaps the closest any human being can come to being an elemental,' the King suggested, but Betony laughed again, shaking his head as if the words were annoying gnats singing in his ear.

The procession moved on. The King turned to Luce. ‘And you truly want to be the Hero?' he asked. ‘It's not too late to turn around and ride back to Diamond.'

‘It's much too late,' said Luce. ‘It's been too late for years. When we last came this way I wasn't much more than a child. I saw Carlyon win and stand over Link – I saw him
become
the Hero of Hoad. He glowed with it all, and in a little while I'll glow like that. I'll be transformed. Carlyon may be a great warrior, but he's older, and I don't think he has the same skills he once had.'

They moved on in silence.

‘A King makes a poor father,' the King said at last. ‘Of course I hope you will win. I hope for your victory more than I have hoped for anything in years.'

Somewhere in Heriot's divided head, the occupant gathered
in the hopes of the King, Luce and Dysart, along with the derision of Betony Hoad, as if it were feeding itself on these drifts of human feeling, and then somehow feeding them back into Heriot himself.

Feeling tired of the intrusion of other people's conjectures and longings, Heriot spoke ahead to Dysart. ‘I know this place,' he said. ‘I saw the last procession as a child from up there on the hills, looking down. Now I'm on the road looking up and seeing myself back then.' He waved at the hilltop. ‘I can feel them all watching … particularly Wish.'

‘Don't get too mystic,' Dysart warned.

‘Why not? Then and now, it's the same procession,' Heriot replied. ‘It's always the same procession, along this causeway …'

His voice had changed. Dysart looked at him curiously. ‘What's wrong?'

Heriot didn't reply.

Remember! Remember!
his occupant was asserting somewhere inside his head
.
Heriot remembered and spoke silently back to the occupant.
Under that arch up ahead is the gate
without walls. Beside that gate I saw freshly flattened grass, its
blades still rising up again. And later, up there on the hill I won
back enough strength to recover. Part of me – you – had hidden and
slept. And, back then, you began waking.

The occupant answered him gleefully.
Here on the causeway
I woke! We had been torn apart, torn in two. But now we're twins.
We work as twins.

Heriot nodded, continuing his inner dialogue.
And over
there, off the causeway. That's where you unwound yourself and
saved me from the Hero of Hoad
.

‘What's wrong?' Dysart asked. That outside voice startled Heriot. ‘Why are you rubbing your side?'

‘Just the memory of an old scratch,' Heriot said. ‘It's left its mark on me in different ways.'

‘Oh all right! Be mysterious!' Dysart said. ‘After all it's part of your job, isn't it?'

In due course they moved on under the arch, and through the gate without walls. The curving road, newly cleared to make way for a royal procession, twisted towards the heart of Cassio's Island. And suddenly there before them was one of the island's great harbours, with a city rising around it. High on a spiky hill stood a spiky castle encircled by a curious lacework of buildings and walls, streets and spires. If it didn't have the power of Guard-on-the-Rock … if it didn't give off the same feeling of impassioned history, this island city still had a strength of its own. And there, riding to meet them, like a curious reflection, came another procession.

Heriot heard Luce exclaiming with something like joy – a joy touched with a curious note of relief as if he recognised his own reflection – as if he, at least, was coming home.

Carlyon, the Hero of Hoad, advanced to meet them. Heriot watched him smile politely at the King, then look past him at Luce. Then, impulsively it seemed, Carlyon rode forward, leaned sideways out of his saddle and embraced Luce as if he were greeting a true friend … more than a friend perhaps … as if he were embracing an earlier self.

‘Welcome to my challenger,' he said, and Heriot was astonished at the warmth and passion in his voice. ‘You might remake me.'

Heriot couldn't see Luce's expression, but he imagined it might be showing some confusion. Luce didn't have the subtlety of mind to understand a man might be the Hero, yet still remember himself as the challenger, that he might find himself overtaken both by an ancient presence he could not anticipate, and by a sudden reunion with the passions he had felt as a younger man

Carlyon killed Link, but that wasn't all he killed
, the occupant
said, speaking, as it sometimes chose to do, in Cayley's broken voice. And almost as if he had heard, Carlyon looked across at Heriot, who smiled back, absentmindedly stroking his side. The scar was nothing but a faint white line, but Heriot sometimes felt that pucker in his skin as an enigmatic road mapped in on him. Carlyon turned away from him to greet the King with a cool formality. He sat straight in the saddle without bowing, as those on either side of him were doing, for he and the King were equals in the land of Hoad.

Carlyon's host led the procession of the King through the streets of his city – streets that were wider and lighter than the streets of Diamond, for Diamond had flung itself carelessly together over its many disordered years, while the Hero's city had been built with beauty in mind. All the same, it lacked the vitality, the savage mystery of Diamond, for Diamond's age and sprawling contradictions made it something beyond beautiful.

As they rode in, a great white space on their left suddenly opened like pale cupped hands, empty and begging to be filled, and indeed the day after tomorrow, that pale cup's implicit request would be answered. But for now the blended processions rode past the arena and into a series of wide, linked courtyards. Men hurried forward to help them dismount, to take their bundles and to lead their horses to the pastures and stables below the castle. The King's family and followers began to climb the wide staircase that zigzagged up the slopes to the castle door.

‘It's easy to be dignified on a stair like this,' Dysart said to Heriot. ‘Even for a mad Prince and a mixed-up Magician.' A few moments later they came into an upper courtyard that was also a great garden. The pointed doors of the castle swung wide, and within minutes, though they were such a grand company, it had swallowed them all.

There was a night of sleeping and then a day of feasting and friendship – a formal celebration of the duality of Hoad, throughout which Luce and Carlyon sat together like brothers. And then, the following day, late in the morning, both the Hero's people and the King's filed through the open gates of that pale arena. Music played and trumpets blew traditional fanfares as the gathered company took their places. Some whispered but on the whole the arena was filled with grave silence, until, at last, a great gong spoke out, making a single metallic announcement.

Luce emerged through an arched doorway to the east while Carlyon came out through a twin doorway to the west. They advanced and faced one another across a stretch of short green grass. Heriot could feel Luce's ambition, certainty and exaltation like an echo of the trumpets, but the feeling that flowed from Carlyon was quite different. There was no exaltation. Carlyon gave off nothing beyond ruthless intention as old skills sprang to life within him. Both men, oiled and armed, shone like spirits. They held swords in their right hands, daggers in their left. Trumpets sounded, and once again the arena echoed with the single note of the gong. Prince and Hero closed on each other without a moment's hesitation, slashing at one another with the swords.

The Hero struck, Luce parried, laughing as he did so. Then Luce struck, and the Hero parried. They swung and circled around each other then closed in again. The clash of blade against blade came faintly but distinctly to the high seats where Heriot sat among the King's company.