One Small Step, an anthology of discoveries (31 page)

There was no one in sight and nothing for me to do but choose a stair. Bearing in mind the telltale sleeve I had seen, I chose to go right. My footsteps echoed in the great empty chamber; when I laid my hand on the bannister, it came away grey with dust. If what I saw and felt was an enchantment only, the illusion of abandonment, I was in skilled hands indeed.

The upper gallery was at least inhabited, if the teetering stacks of cobwebbed books obscuring the walls and their civilisation of spiders could be counted as such. Here and there a door was visible enough to be opened, and none were locked, but neither were the rooms beyond occupied. The light filtering through their diamond-paned, dust-coated windows was waning from afternoon into evening when at last I found the owner of the black sleeve upon which I had placed such faith. I knew the moment I saw him that he was not who I had come to find.

For one thing, he was aged in his fifties at the oldest and therefore far too young. For another, he seemed to have been as oblivious to my presence as I had been to his. When I opened his door he jerked around in astonishment, dropping the slender blue-bound volume he had been reading. He dived immediately to retrieve it before straightening to look at me.

“
How long have you been there?” he asked, brushing off the book and laying it down on the nearest lectern. There were at least five of these scattered about the room, some displaying open books, others piled up with loose maps and sketches. It was a scene of total disarray, not power at all. The man himself was tall and gangling, his bald skull ringed with woolly brown curls, his eyes a milky, mildly inquisitive blue. His black robe was too large for his thin frame and streaked with dusty handprints.

“
I arrived an hour or more ago,” I said. There was a broad brocade chair heaped with more of the sorcerer’s interminable supply of books close at hand; I shifted the pile onto the floor and replaced them with myself, too tired to care about the inevitable cloud of dust. “Is the sorcerer Forsythian in residence? I have business with him.”

“
Oh,” said the black-robed man. “I thought you might be a student. They turn up every so often, you know, though it is terribly easy to miss them. Sometimes months go by before I realise they’re here at all, but when we meet I do try to help. It’s such an effort to get this far, and I have been here the longest, after all.”

I frowned, sure I had misunderstood. “You are a student yourself?”

“
I didn’t think so,” he said, “until I came here. I intended to challenge Forsythian to a sorcerer’s duel — very melodramatic, I know — but when I arrived he was nowhere to be found. I stopped looking eventually and started reading instead. I’ve been here ever since.”

“
And how long has that been?”

“
Around twenty years, I should think,” he said brightly. “Oh, forgive me, I haven’t introduced myself. My name is Alabast Tern.” He held out a bony-knuckled hand. Ensconced in the surprisingly comfortable chair, I accepted it briefly.

“
You may call me Meriel,” I said. It was the first time I had spoken my name aloud since I was married and it sounded a little strange, exposed to the open air. “But you must have seen Forsythian since you came? He can’t be dead.”

It was a singularly stupid thing to say, since at any time any one can be dead. Just because the sorcerer had not lived long enough to answer my request did not mean he had to be alive. To my relief, however, Alabast was nodding.

“
Eventually, yes, I did,” he said. “In this very room, as it happens. I was reading a book of Galadean poetry aloud and stopped halfway through a rather fine ballad to tend the fire. When I returned for my book, he was there. He didn’t like the way I was reciting and insisted on doing the rest of the ballad himself.”

The man seemed inclined to wander from the point at hand. I tried to usher him back to the line of questioning I really wanted answered. “Where is he now?”

Alabast looked around vaguely, as though expecting to find the sorcerer folded up somewhere on a shelf. “I haven’t the faintest idea,” he said. “How long has it been, then? I’m afraid I lose track of time quite often. I’m sure he was here in the summer.”

“
It’s summer now,” I said patiently. I was glad I had elected to sit. It felt as though I might be asking questions for some time. “Do you think Forsythian is here?”

“
Oh, bound to be, bound to be,” Alabast assured me. He took up the little blue book he had been reading when I had interrupted him and thumbed through the gilt-edged pages for his place. “He never leaves the fortress, that I know of. He’ll turn up when he wants to talk to you.”

My right hand rested against the slight swelling of my stomach. I could feel the hollow inside my chest where fear should have been. “How long will that take?” I demanded. “I need to speak with him now.”

“
I’m sorry,” Alabast said. He looked at me over the top of his book and smiled a little ruefully. “If he wants to see you, you will see him. If he doesn’t want to see you, you never will. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like, of course.”

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I was there for the rest of the summer, and the autumn as well. It seemed Forsythian did not intend to see me, but I would not leave without seeing him. I had not come this far to go away again empty-handed.

Not all of the house was so dramatically unkempt as what I saw on that first day. As Alabast had said, there were other students here and there, if that they could be called, considering most had barely even seen the man they called master. I saw a young woman in jester’s cast-offs scratching obscure runes in chalk on a courtyard floor, a silent matron with iron grey hair sitting frozen in a garden of broken statues, a boy no older than thirteen or fourteen juggling apples among the chimney stacks of an unreachable rooftop. Alabast was generally squirreled away somewhere with a book, but after half a year in the sorcerer’s house I had seen nothing to indicate Forsythian himself even existed. He seemed more like a shared delusion than a real person.

And still I stayed. I had, in all truth, nowhere else left to go.

I ate in the kitchens, which I privately thought of as the dungeons, where there was never light but always something moderately edible, and slept in a room where there was a moth-eaten settee that did me well enough for a bed. The rest of each day I spent in a restless circuit of the house and its four enclosed courtyards in the increasingly remote hope that I might stumble upon Forsythian’s hiding place. Why he would endure this charade if he were here, I couldn’t imagine — if he could not or would not assist me, why not simply appear and send me on my way? It was his house, wasn’t it? But wizards of every sort are bizarre creatures, I knew that already, and the stories of Forsythian painted him as stranger than most.

The symptoms of pregnancy progressed at the usual rate. I swelled like a waxing moon to an utterly impractical shape. The baby kicked restlessly inside my body and I tried to imagine holding it, like I half-remembered my mother holding me, but I couldn’t. Imagination had never been my gift, least of all then.

I gave birth on the first day of winter, in a thankfully short labour, alone in my chamber. I could, I suppose, have called for help, but no one in this place could give me the help I really needed. Pain I could manage alone. I had endured worse for less reason.

The baby was a boy.

“
Goodness,” Alabast exclaimed when he saw me with my son for the first time, several days later. He leaned over the infant in my arms, fluttering his hands nervously in what I assumed was a congratulatory gesture. “When did this one arrive? Is he yours?” A suddenly hunted look crossed his face. “He’s not Forsythian’s?”

“
I shouldn’t think so,” I said coldly, “given that I have never met the man.”

Alabast petted the baby on the head like a puppy. “I see,” he said penitently. “I did hope he might be accommodating for you, but I suppose he might not have noticed you’re here. He does get distracted. You’ll simply have to be patient.”

“
I don’t have twenty years to spare, Master Tern.”

“
No, no, my dear, I only had to wait two. The rest were my own decision.”

I made a kind of nest in my room from ancient blankets, thoroughly washed, and a moth-eaten green velvet skirt I’d found in amongst the mountains of books. While my son slept there I would sit on my makeshift bed and watch him. My fears had been well founded. I had seen mothers with their children, seen the adoring light in their exhausted eyes — even the fortress’s cat, a stately white creature of indeterminate age, doted on her litters of kittens while they were small enough to need her. When I looked at my baby I felt nothing, nothing at all. I fed him and washed him out of duty. I knew I should care. I tried to will the love from my empty chest, but it would not come.

By the end of the first month of winter, I had come to the conclusion that I would never see the sorcerer. It was time to formulate a different solution. Leaving my son asleep in his nest of blankets, I went out into the nearest courtyard where a leafless apple tree was surrounded by a round wooden bench. Snow dusted my hair as I sat there, my cloak drawn close around my shoulders, my hands encased in soft grey gloves, the chill nevertheless sinking slowly through to my skin. I didn’t mind the winter weather. Nothing in the world could be colder than me.

I was a wealthy woman. I could give my son a comfortable life, a luxurious home and good education. By my standards, that was all anyone could ask, but I couldn’t give him love. Would that make the rest redundant? Would he be better off with some other woman who would treat him as a gift from the heavens, while all I could do was look at him nonplussed, unable to see the charm?

“
Your baby is crying.”

The voice came from behind me and I turned automatically to respond. There was no one there. Neither was the voice familiar, although it was entirely possible that another ‘student’ had arrived at some point and vanished into the depths of the house without my meeting him. I stood, brushing snow from my wine-dark skirts and neatly knotted hair.

“
No, it’s all right,” the voice said. “Alabast has gone to him.”

I twisted quickly back around. The words had seemed to come from directly behind me, at my shoulder almost, and still I could see no one. There was not enough snow on the ground to show footprints, but even so I was sure I would have heard something if someone had come so close.

“
Who are you?” I said sharply. “Kindly show yourself.”

“
I’m not known for my kindness,” said the voice. It was low-pitched and dry, with the trace of an unfamiliar accent. “Nor are you, I gather, your Majesty.”

My hands fisted in my skirts. “
Show yourself.
”
 

“
No,” he said mildly. “You are very persistent, I will admit, but I don’t think I trust you. What is it you want from me? And don’t,” he added, “please don’t pretend you want nothing more than to see me. You can’t imagine how tired I am of people pretending they’ve come just to see if I exist. No one comes to my house without reason. Usually something mercenary. Bags of gold that never empty, swords that never rust, things of that like.”

“
Forsythian,” I whispered.

He gave a humourless laugh. “Who were you expecting?”

I sank back onto the bench and fixed my eyes on a gargoyle overlooking the courtyard. If I had to talk, I would at least address myself to something I could see. It felt too ridiculous just staring blindly into space and hoping.

“
I do want something from you,” I said. “I — years ago, I lost something very valuable. I need it back.”

“
What might this thing be?” he asked disinterestedly. His voice sounded further away, as though he were already leaving.

I rested my cold-gloved fingers against my chest. “My heart,” I said simply.

There was a sigh. “To whom? If it’s unrequited love that ails you, queen, try smiling at him. With a face like yours it shouldn’t be difficult to win who you want.”

“
You don’t understand,” I said. “I don’t love anyone.
I have no heart
.”
 

Cold fingers pulled my chin suddenly sideways. I had the disorienting experience of staring into eyes I couldn’t see. “What,” said Forsythian, very quietly, “did you do?”

“
I loved what I couldn’t have,” I said. “You think I am beautiful, sorcerer? Well, my father did too. Of all his jewels and possessions, he was proudest of me. When I was grown, he had me betrothed to a king with whom he had long desired allegiance. I didn’t want to marry that man. Never mind why. Brides are good currency in this part of the world and the wedding was arranged regardless. What I wanted could never be mine. Knowing that, I resolved not to want anything. Don’t judge me, sorcerer. I am not the first to make such a choice.

“
There was a wizard within a day’s ride of my father’s castle — a necromancer, the courtiers used to call him. I went to him for help. Even he balked at what I asked, but as you say, I am persistent. I wore him down with pleading and promises. He agreed eventually. He took my heart from my chest, my broken bloody heart. He locked it away in a box within a box and hid it for me where no one else would ever find it.

“
I was married the next day. The king took me like the trophy I was. We were married for five years before he died.

“
You think I killed him, don’t you? I didn’t. Murder is a crime of passion and I had no passion left without my heart. He knew I didn’t love him; he was afraid of me, I think. Most people are when they come to know me. His heart failed him in the end. Hearts do. It was only after he was gone I found that I was pregnant.”