The Child Eater (27 page)

He could have gone by coach. They would have taken one of his ten florins and given him a few ducats back, but somehow he didn't want to arrive that way. So he used the Unwilled Stride, a way to let the Earth move your feet at great speed and with little effort. In the midst of his journey, with trees and stones a blur, he remembered how he and Royja had seen tracks outside the inn the night Medun had come, a dog or a wolf, and imagined he'd turned himself into a beast.

If he could fly, he thought, he wouldn't have to move across the Earth at all. But then, if he could fly, there would be no reason to go, not there, at least. Even without flying, he arrived in less time than it had taken him to make the journey out, when he'd hidden behind a grille in a rickety coach.

He stopped a good distance from the building, among a small stand of trees, where he could cast his Cloak of Concealment spell and just watch. It was evening, the sky a dull purple that looked just right for the dusty road, the sparse trees, the unpainted stables and the rickety inn itself. Was it always that small? That shabby? The foolish sign, a crudely painted squirrel holding a giant acorn, creaked slightly in the occasional breeze. He remembered hearing his mother tell a guest once that the previous owner had seen the name, or maybe just the picture, in a dream.

Candles flickered in the narrow windows. That had been one of his jobs, to keep the candles fresh in their filthy glass holders. He remembered how he'd let one burn out once so that someone's dinner went dark for a minute or so before Matyas could rush up with a new candle. That night his father kicked him so hard he coughed up blood and then had to scrub the floor so it wouldn't leave a stain. He was five at the time.

He stared at the door, its red paint now faded to a dull brown. If he concentrated just a little he could hear voices, a good crowd, it appeared. Then he remembered it was Thursday, coach day. There'd be people resting on their way to the city.

He could leave. He hadn't come for them, after all. He could go and see the person he needed to see and then take off again and no one would know. Instead, he went up to the door where he reached out twice for the handle, only to surprise himself by knocking.

His mother opened it. Matyas braced himself, thinking he could still run before she began to scream at him, or whatever she was going to do. Dressed as she always was, in a black dress and a plain white apron with her gray hair pulled back into a tight bun, she stared at him, her eyes running from his face to his robe and back again. And then—just as she'd done that other time—she crossed her arms over her chest and bowed and said, “Master. You honor us deeply. Please enter.”

Matyas followed her, dazed. Did she really not know? Maybe if she actually looked at him, he thought, for in fact she kept her eyes down, and if she had to glance his way she didn't raise them higher than the tree of signs painted on his chest. But hadn't she seen his face in the doorway?

As they walked through the room, people hunched over their beer or looked away, some making signs of protection. “Wizards,” one man said in disgust, only to have his friends frantically whisper him quiet.

His mother took him to
that
room, of course. Maybe from now on they would proudly name it “the room of the Masters.”

“This is our best room,” she said. “Reserved . . . reserved for our most important guests.”

“Yes,” he said, and wondered if his voice would give him away.

If so, he couldn't tell, for she just asked, “May I bring you anything?”

“No. Thank you.”

She bowed her head and shuffled awkwardly from the room as if frightened to turn her back on him.

Alone, Matyas turned around and just looked at everything. There was the high-backed wooden chair with the badly carved lions' heads at the ends of the arms, the cheap oval rug with its off-center designs, the absurd bed with its droopy canopy. He thought of the room Malchior had given him in the Masters' Residency, the tapestries, the huge bed, the jade tiger, and how he'd told them to remove everything. He shook his head, his mouth open. When he looked at the chair again he could almost see Medun, the stocky body in his brown and gold robe, the white skullcap, the red beard like an unruly flower bed. And the hands, thin and strong as they slid the pictures in and out of each other, the copy of a copy of a copy, searching . . . for what? Something to break the spell? Wandering Exile, forced never to spend two nights in the same place. It had sounded so trivial when Veil described it to him, but now Matyas could hardly imagine it.

There was a knock at the door, quiet, hesitant. Matyas almost ignored it but then he stepped across the room, opened it—and there he was. Bent over slightly (unless he was just trying to bow and not very good at it), mostly bald, his face above the beard stubble (he never did have the patience to shave properly) all scratched for some reason, the thick shoulders in his ill-fitting shirt. And the hands—those hands!—callused, with enlarged knuckles, they held a small tray with a stemless wine glass and a small carafe of wine. Like his wife, he kept his eyes low, didn't look up as he said, “Master. We would like to offer you our best wine. Blackberry. We make it ourselves. If you want . . . if you wish something to eat, we will be happy to serve you. Anything you like. My wife is a very fine cook.”

His voice hoarse, Matyas said, “The wine is enough. Just set it down on the table.”

“Yes, Master, of course.” He did as he was told and quickly left.

How could he not know?
There was a mirror on the wall opposite the bed, chipped glass in a heavy wooden frame. Matyas stared at himself. He was taller, his shoulders straighter, his whole body more muscular. And he had the robe, of course, no torn shirt and pants but a cosmos of signs and wonders flowing across his body. And there was something else. He was clean. No grease, no mud, no ashes. No blood.

Oh God
, he thought. He turned away from the mirror, thinking to sit down, but instead just stood there, unable to move. There was so much he could
do
. Tighten the throat so he couldn't breathe. No, let
him breathe but make it too narrow to eat, so he would slowly starve to death over days, maybe weeks. Or heat the blood, slowly, hotter and hotter until he burned to death from the inside. Or set his feet and hands on fire. Or freeze them so they broke off and he couldn't walk or feed himself.

Or change him. Change him into a toad—no, a mouse, and let someone's boot crush him in the kitchen. Or some small, helpless creature that Matyas could set outside for an owl, or a hawk, to tear him to pieces. He heard the inn's sign creak in a gust of wind. A squirrel! He could change his father into a squirrel!

He sat down on the bed now, squeezed shut his eyes and tightened his fists against the laughter that would never stop. There was a spell that could do that. He could make his father laugh and laugh and laugh until he convulsed into death.

Get out of the room
, Matyas told himself,
the room, the building, now
.

He opened the door just enough to see that neither of them was in the main room, then he cast his shielding spell around himself and hurried down the stairs and out through the door. A man sitting alone turned his head as if he felt Matyas go by, then shrugged and returned to his ale.

Once outside, Matyas realized he'd been holding his breath and made himself calm down.
Everything is good
, he told himself. All he had to do was go where he needed to go and then he could leave. (“Wizards,” he imagined his father saying. “They show up all high and mighty and then they just sneak off when you're not looking. Good riddance to the bastards, if you ask me.”)

And maybe he would have done just that and not thought any more about it if his path had not taken him alongside the stable and if he hadn't seen her there, feeding the coach horses. Still, she had her back to him and he could have just walked on. Instead, he stood and watched, not even using his shield, until she finished her task and turned around.

In that moment before she faced him, he discovered himself terrified that she too might not know him—terror and hope, for she was the last, and if she couldn't see it was him he was free. But she turned and stopped and dropped her wooden feed bucket, and he knew that he was caught. They stood there for a while, about twenty feet apart, and when he took a step toward her she moved back, so he stopped and waited.

And looked. Was she always that short? Was her hair always so greasy, and cut as if she'd just slashed at it? Were her clothes always so thin and worn and too small? She'd grown fat. Her belly pushed against her dull brown dress. No. Not fat.

She looked him up and down. “So,” she said. “You got what you wanted.”

“I . . . I came back. I told you I would.”

She laughed, and he grimaced.
Stupid
, he scolded himself. When did she acquire the power to make him feel stupid?

“You look . . . dazzling. Can you . . . can you do things?”

He glanced around, saw a stray piece of wood that must have fallen from someone's arms on the way from the woodpile to the fireplace (one of his jobs). With a gesture he shot it up to eye-level, spun it around so fast it almost vanished, then let it fall back to the dirt.

“Ha!” she cried, and clapped her hands, and for just a moment it was her again,
them
again. And then she shook her head, and he could see her squeezing back tears.

“You could come with me,” he said, and became terrified she'd rush to say yes.

She made a noise, looked away for a minute, then down at her swollen belly. “Even if you wanted me . . .” she said.

“Who is it?” he asked. “I mean . . .”

“I know what you mean. His name is Kark. Your parents hired him after . . . after you ran away.”

Somewhere in the ancient archives there was a story,
The Man Who Was Replaced
. It told of a brutal king whose subjects begged a wizard for help. Rather than execute the king, or even imprison him, the Master simply created a benign substitute and caused everyone—the courtiers, the advisers, even the queen—to think this replacement was real. No one knew what happened to the original. Matyas said, “This Kark. Do my parents—?”

“Beat him?” She shrugged.

“Then why does he—?”

“Stay?” She looked around. “I suppose it's better than starving.”

Matyas nodded toward her belly. “Is that your first?”

She laughed. “Third. A boy, a girl and now whatever this is.” When she saw alarm flash in his face, she said, “Matyas, the oldest is four.”

“Oh.” He'd been gone nearly six years. “You could still come with me,” he said.

“Stop it!”

He stepped back, and as if she couldn't help herself, she moved forward, keeping the same distance between them. “Matyas,” she said, and had to stop, take a breath. “It's all right. You did what you had to do. To get out. My father never . . . It wasn't the same for me.” When he didn't answer, she said, “Go. Do—Whatever it is you came for, do it, and then—just go.”

He hesitated, then nodded and turned. He was only a few steps away when she called out, “Matyas!” He spun around. “Is it true?” she asked. When he didn't answer, she said, “Does the palace float in the air? Are the mansions made out of flowers? Are the royal family descended from swans? Are there streets that turn around and around and no one ever gets out?”

He smiled and said, “Yes. It's all true.”

Royja laughed, and clapped her hands. “I knew it,” she said. “Thank you, Matyas.
Thank you
.”

“Royja—” he said, but she held up a hand.

“No. You have to—” She ran into the stables. He heard a horse neigh, and beneath that the sound of weeping.

Like everything else, the dark grove looked smaller than Matyas remembered it: still dense, twisted, caught up in a kind of cloud of hate, just not very large. Matyas could walk around it in less time than it would take the Sun to pass over it from one end to the other. He wondered how it had looked to the Flying Man as he came down from the sky.

He stared at the trees, so tightly woven, impossible to enter without some kind of help. What had happened here? He did not doubt that the Heavenly Victors had placed the High Prince in as harsh a place as possible, part of his punishment for not taking sides in the Great War of Darkness and Light. But what made this place the worst they could find? What happened here? He tried to probe the trees with magic but it proved as useless as sight.

He shrugged. Not his concern. Was this the right place, the right person? That was all that mattered.

“Come around me,” he said. When nothing happened he invoked the Voice of Command, an amplification spell that could cause rivers to run uphill. Still nothing. For the first time it struck him that he might not get inside. Without help . . . But wasn't he stronger than a knot of
trees? His hands clenched and unclenched, his whole body tensed in preparation for an all-out attack.

And then the lights came. The Splendor. Stronger than any time since he'd first seen them, they swarmed all over his body. “Open the way,” he said, and just as those other times, for the Flying Man and then for Matyas himself, the lights briefly blocked his view of the trees, and when the lights vanished there was a pathway. The black branches arched over it, straining to close the gap, but couldn't do it. Matyas took a breath and walked inside.

It didn't take very long to reach the center, to reach the prisoner. A golden head perched on an ebony stick of polished darkness. Beauty beyond male or female, beyond even the Sun and Moon, the High Prince of the Kallistochoi was a remnant of an age before the world hardened into the dullness of wood and metal, water and stone. Eyes closed. The skin smooth and motionless. Sleeping?
Dreaming?