The Magician of Hoad (13 page)

“And you—what do you want to be?” Heriot asked innocently enough, but immediately he was flooded with the knowledge that Dysart, too, yearned to be King—that Dysart longed for the throne far more than Betony Hoad, who wanted something for himself far beyond being either King or Hero. On occasions when the court assembled for some festival or other, and Heriot slid briefly into mind after mind, touching them all and persuading them into sharing the magical illusions he created for the King’s entertainment, all glorifying Hoad, he could feel Betony Hoad watching him with an envy so intense he shrank from him. For Betony wanted something beyond simple humanity. He wanted to command the sun.

The work Heriot did had a sort of mysterious triumph about it, and yet, as time went by, he felt increasingly sure that, whatever his powers might be intended for, they were not intended to winkle out the secrets of diplomacy from heads that could not defend themselves, nor to invent entertainments for the glory of the King. Yet that was exactly what he had been brought there to do. Even
his good and growing friendship with Prince Dysart was touched by the curious knowledge that someday Dysart would want to make use of him in an undefined way. And, as he obediently followed orders, he felt not only Dysart watching him with secret expectations, but also the outside city constantly peering in at him, guessing about him as it tried to shape him to its own needs. At times he felt himself becoming a toy of the city—a powerful toy, but still a toy, his strange powers reduced to mere functions of the court, when, he was certain, they had some other vast purpose he could not define. Day after day… day after day… time went by.

***

Heriot woke.

Five years. That was his first thought. He had been Hoad’s Magician for five years. And this morning, as on so many other mornings, he woke feeling that the source of his strange powers—that wild, disconnected part of himself he often thought of as an occupant—was being somehow misused. It was not intended simply to serve Kings. Somehow he was being blocked from being the complete self he was intended to be—he was being reduced to a series of freakish functions. “Where’s the rest of me?” he asked the plain walls of his room, a room that had never, in all the five years he had slept in it, seemed to be really his. It contained him obediently, but he didn’t live in it. Though he asked his questions aloud over and over again, it never had any answers for him… not even an echo.

Five years. He had been in Diamond for five years and during that time had seen very little of his family.

Hey, you!
he said to himself, moving to his single window and staring out into the city.
This place is eating you. You’re not a full person anymore… you’re nothing but a magical machine, being cranked on and on by the King and Lord Glass.
The words ran like a hunting pack through Heriot’s head, carrying a suggestion with them… more than a suggestion… a commandment.
Take charge of the city out there. Be free of the King and Lord Glass. Be independent of Dysart, even if he is your friend. Remake yourself. Remake yourself today.
This command welled up in him, and was accompanied by yet another inner order.
Celebrate your five years. You’re seventeen. You’re grown up. Be free.

His suddenly dominating wish was to be out in Diamond, wandering in the city without a Prince on his right hand or a Lord on his left. He put on the silver-rimmed glasses they’d given him to wear and stared out across the castle bridges and into its retreating gardens and orchards. Five years good! Five years—the same five years—frightened, sometimes for himself… often
of
himself. It was partly being frightened by what might happen next or by what he might become that kept him good. But this morning his dream had nudged him. Time for a change.

Five years,
the city declared incessantly, as he walked over the bridge linking the inner island dominated by the towers of Guard-on-the-Rock and its dark shadow, Hoad’s Pleasure, toward the First Ring gardens and promenades.

To get into the gardens he had to walk through an alley of cages—the King’s Zoo—past a lion and a lioness, whose cage gave onto a spacious run, past a long pen with a leopard. All this was ordinary enough, perhaps, but then the
cages changed. The wire nets held small gardens and sheds that looked like cottages.

Standing in her garden, watching him go by, was the two-faced woman, a woman watching the world with a face that was ordinary enough, even pleasant. But if she turned around, she had another face on the back of her head, a fierce little face, rolling its eyes and continually dribbling and grimacing. Dysart declared she was happy in the zoo; her life in the city had been a wretched one, and Heriot thought this was probably true. She seemed to give off a sort of relief he picked up as he passed by.

But this wasn’t true of the man in the next cage, a very tall, dark man, tattooed all over… the illustrated man. Every inch of his skin was covered with tiny pictures linked by curious designs. He was both man and map. This man gave off fury and despair, as a fire gives off heat and light. Every so often Heriot would stop beside this cage and stare in at the man, amazed to find how the tattoos created some sort of barrier between the man displaying them and anyone looking in at him. The cage seemed to contain… not a man but a moving design, and no matter what feeling flowed out between the bars to merge with Heriot’s own moods, it seemed impossible to see the actual man everyone knew must be lurking behind those patterns and pictures. The lines and images cut into his skin somehow turned sight back on itself. There seemed to be no looking past them.

“Five years!” Heriot kept muttering to himself, echoing the city’s announcement. “Which means it’s just a bit over five years since I took off for Cassio’s Island and met their
Hero.” Half-unconsciously he touched his side, tracing the old scar under his silk shirt and smiling a curious smile alive not only with self-mockery but with menace as well.

He strode along, anticipating with pleasure the solitude of the orchard, planning to locate that richer self that seemed to be waiting to embrace him somewhere out among the apple trees, only to find a moment later that the orchard wasn’t as deserted as he had supposed it would be.

Through an arch of green in the dense hedge that divided the orchard from the neighboring orchards, he saw Betony Hoad’s companion, Talgesi, standing quite stiff and still, almost as if he was on guard, though Heriot knew there was nothing there worth guarding. A moment later and he was looking into a square, sunken garden, clasped around on all sides with low hedges, empty of flower beds but with a graceful fountain rising out of a pool where water lilies sometimes bloomed.

Knowing at once that Talgesi was very unhappy, Heriot turned away, hesitated, stopped, spun around, and then walked back again.

“You’re not feeling so good, perhaps,” he said tentatively. “Can I help in any way?” The other did not reply, but someone spoke from beyond him.

“Magician, is that you?” said the voice of Prince Betony Hoad. “It must be. No one else I know has an accent like that. Come here.”

Heriot grimaced but stepped, obediently, all the way down into the sunken garden, becoming yet again a function of Diamond.

Prince Betony Hoad sat beside the fountain with a little
crumbled bread in a silver dish, feeding the fish. He studied Heriot for a moment in his deceptively gentle fashion, and then spoke dreamily. “Unbraid your hair!”

“It’s very long these days, Lord Prince,” Heriot said apologetically. “And there’s a bit of a breeze. It’ll blow everywhere.”

“But why make yourself fantastic and then hide your fantasy?” asked Betony Hoad. “Just do as I say. Don’t argue.”

Heriot, watched by both men, reluctantly unplaited his hair from a braid as thick as a rope.

“What a thunderstorm,” Betony Hoad said appreciatively. “Now you look rather more exceptional. I heard you speak a moment ago to Talgesi. How long have you worked for me, Talgesi?”

“Twenty years,” Talgesi replied in a colorless voice. “Since we were both learning to walk, Lord Prince,” he added, almost whispering.

“Talgesi and I are saying good-bye,” Betony Hoad explained. “I am to be married. My future wife’s father, the King of Camp Hyot, has decided his daughter is old enough to bear the rigors of a royal marriage, and my father has decided that a program of stringent virtue might enable his heir to act as a man and husband and even father in due course—so good-bye, Talgesi.” The sun shone on the Prince’s smooth face, revealing fine lines about his eyes. “I don’t care, you know,” he added. “Talgesi was nothing when we first met, and he is almost nothing now. For myself, I’m prepared to marry.” Betony Hoad closed his eyes. Then he opened them again and looked at Talgesi. “He’s so unhappy, I don’t think he’ll live long.”

“People can find new friends,” Heriot said, looking at Talgesi. “Even people who’re only halfway lucky.”

“There’s a difficulty there.” Betony Hoad now gave Heriot a glance of satirical reproof. “I wouldn’t fancy being part of a succession… even to be the first of a few would be most distasteful to me. I just don’t know how we can resolve it. If he were a man of honor, he’d kill himself, but he seems to be dithering.”

“Dear life!” exclaimed Heriot. “Would you do that, if it was you?”

“But I’m not honorable,” Betony Hoad replied. “I don’t have to be. I’m noble. And of course I don’t want him ever being happy without me.” He looked sternly at Talgesi, then turned back to Heriot again. “And so you’ve been in Guard-on-the-Rock five years today, Magician?”

Heriot’s amazement must have showed.

“Oh, I very well remember riding back from the battlefield and the great welcome as we came in.” Betony Hoad got to his feet and took Heriot’s arm. “Walk with me down the path until it divides.” It was an order, not a suggestion. “It’s only a few steps away. Then I will wind my way back over the Bridge of the Lion, to meet the Lords from Camp Hyot who are here to negotiate my wedding plans. And you will doubtless take a few deep breaths, then go to your studies with Dysart and other noble boys, where I understand you distinguish yourself admirably. Mind you, I must say I think you could try harder to eliminate that unfortunate accent.”

He stepped forward, pulling Heriot with him.

“Talgesi, do try and make up your mind,” he added,
speaking severely over his shoulder. “I don’t wish to have to take matters into my own hands.”

“Lord Prince,” Heriot declared, “what you are suggesting is wicked!”

“Oh, I do hope so,” said Betony Hoad. “That young man is only a dull machine unless he suffers. So it’s five years for you? You’ve been very quiet… a little boring, really. But here we are. I go my way and you go yours—if you have a way, that is. Good-bye, Magician—and run hard, won’t you?”

“Likely I’ve got a bit to run from and a bit to run after, Lord Prince,” Heriot said, emphasizing his slow speech very slightly.

“Likely you have,” said Betony Hoad, and, grimacing and turning away, he walked off along a broad, paved path toward the King’s Zoo and the Bridge of the Lion.

Heriot watched him go, then thought a little about the day ahead of him. The King wouldn’t need him today. There were always those studies, of course. Yet suppose it really was time for rebellion? As he thought this, there was a spasm in the air, an agitation that resolved into something like a rapid muttering in his ear. Once again the stones of Guard-on-the-Rock had begun instructing him.
Be free! Be free!

Replaiting his hair into that single braid as he walked, Heriot moved out from under the trees and onto a wide path that followed the green curve of the towering, ivycovered wall toward the gates between the First and Second Rings of Diamond. There were guards at the gates, but Heriot knew the passwords. No one questioned him as he moved into the Second Ring.

It was like coming into another world. Early as it was, there were people up and about, setting up their stalls, trading, and tallying.

In one of the Second Ring marketplaces among relatively elegant stalls, between a man mending broken china pottery with his own mixture of egg and lime, and another concerned with spices, stretched a busy counter piled with vegetables and baskets of gooseberries, raspberries, and oranges. Heriot, stopping to buy an orange, suddenly had the strange feeling he had seen a face he somehow recognized. Or perhaps it was a face his occupant wanted him to know. He turned slowly, sure he must not seem too urgent.

There beside him at the stall was a child thief, a boy of about twelve, practicing his art. Heriot stared.
I know that boy,
he was thinking.
But how can I know him?
The child stared into the air while lifting with incredible speed and skill orange after orange from a row of baskets, slipping them into the front of a baggy shirt.
Who is he?
thought Heriot, searching his memory, but that particular face, though familiar, was nowhere to be found… and yet the certainty that he knew the boy strengthened.

The boy caught his eye, hesitated, and then smiled, a smile of such vitality and shared fellowship that Heriot, though he had paid for his own orange, was instantly won over. The child’s face was thin and bruised, but the smile was entirely joyous. Even as Heriot marveled, there came a shout from behind the baskets of fruit. The smile vanished. The boy spun around, weaving desperately out into the scrambling crowd without waiting to see if, in fact, the
cry had been directed at him. A moment later one of the Second Ring wardens pushed past Heriot in pursuit, and Heriot, worked on by that mysterious sympathy, first put out his foot to trip the warden, and then began to run too, though there was absolutely no necessity for him to get involved in someone else’s wild adventure.

Hagen was barren but always beautiful, a county of long winters and short, brilliant summers, of winds, lakes, and stunted forests. In the northeast, the volcano Warning, its plume of smoke perpetually streaming, reared up between fans of rock where nothing would grow except pale medallions of lichen or small, tough shrubs. Yet, in the spring, whole slopes could be transformed overnight by a sudden flowering of silken poppies, delicate as tissue but tough enough to survive the harsh winds. They survived because they knew how to bend. But the volcano, rather than the flower, was Linnet’s chosen sign—an unyielding cone with fire at its heart. All the same, bending of some sort became unexpectedly necessary.