The Magician of Hoad (25 page)

“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 and the King’s people 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 each other 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 each other 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.

“It’s stupid,” said Heriot under his breath, speaking to Cayley, who had been allowed to sit at his elbow. “It has a sort of magnificence, but it’s stupid.” And as he said this, he saw Betony Hoad turn a little in his seat and look at him with an expression in which surprise and recognition were mixed together.

“Just being alive—that’s got its stupid side,” Cayley muttered back, focused on the two figures below. “And none of us asks to be born.” Then he laughed, flinging out his arm as if he too brandished a sword, but an invisible one.

The two men clashed again, striking in at each other with a series of rapid and skillful blows, then curving briefly away from each other to gasp and balance themselves before closing in to strike again. Blood leaped from Carlyon’s shoulder, and a great sigh arose from the crowd. Tributaries of blood ran down from his shoulder and wound across his chest, but he seemed to ignore these thin crimson streams, leaping forward and thrusting at Luce, inflicting a small gash low in the Prince’s side. Luce struck the Hero’s sword away, but Carlyon moved in on him almost in the same moment. The blades slid against each other, and just for a moment the men struggled, their faces almost touching, both grinning savage grins of ferocity, not friendship. Their left hands rose. Light gleamed on the
daggers, but somehow, before either of them could truly strike, they tore apart. It was Luce who had sprung back this time, trying to free himself, hoping perhaps for a better chance, but as Luce retreated, Carlyon moved in on him. Heriot was suddenly seeing, somewhere inside his head, a face he had seen before, a face twisted with a ruthless fury. He was seeing it from a distance this time—he was not the target—but it all came back to him, and he took a breath, half intending to protect Luce as he had once protected himself. Luce smashed a sword blow down at Carlyon and the whole arena gasped, but Carlyon was already whirling away, beads of blood pumping out into the air around him. Luce, committed to his savage blow, lost his balance a little, and it was Carlyon’s turn to dive in. Once again the two men fought skin against skin, not clashing swords but left-arm wrestling with each other, shouting with wordless fury. Heriot thought that one or the other must drop his sword, but even as they embraced they struck at each other with their daggers, inflicting shallow cuts on shifting shoulders, but no wound so great that either gave in. Then they tore apart from each other yet again—sweating, panting, bleeding—trying to move constantly, refusing to be any sort of target.

But even before Heriot had drawn a following breath, Carlyon let out a sound—a mixture of a scream and a roar— that seemed to ring around the arena. He charged forward, then seemed to slip in the blood underfoot, for by now the blood of the Prince and the blood of the Hero had became a single stain. So Carlyon slipped, staggered, and fell to his
knees. Luce moved in behind his sword, a flash of light catching on his teeth for a second, though whether he was smiling or snarling was impossible to tell.

“No! No!” Cayley hissed behind Heriot. “It’s a trap. A trap!” For suddenly Carlyon was springing to his feet again. Luce leaped back, but Carlyon was in under the blow and suddenly it was Luce who was bending… bowing deeply before the Hero of Hoad. Carlyon pulled his sword free, but only to drive his dagger into Luce, slashing him across the belly. Now Luce dropped, first his sword, which clanged on the stones at his feet, then his dagger, which tinkled faintly. He swayed, clapping his hands over his wound, but he could not hold back the blood and twisting entrails that now burst out of him, spreading in a tangle on the flat arena stones.

“Quick! He needed to be quick,” Cayley was muttering. “And it’s under, not over.” He had been a ball of tension beside Heriot, living every blow as if he were the one delivering it, but suddenly he relaxed as if the battle was over. “See, it’s not just getting in a glorious blow,” he said sideways to Heriot. “It’s being able to dance away from the other glorious blow that comes at
you.
That’s part of quickness. And that Prince—he’s dead.”

Heriot knew Luce as a handsome figure moving through the Tower of the Lion, barely glancing in his direction. Now he watched him bowing deeply over his erupting wound with something approaching grief. Carlyon lifted his sword once more. There was a huge power in his movement as he raised the sword above the
staggering Luce—still bowed before him, entrails sliding between his fingers, blood spouting wildly—then brought that sword down on the back of the Prince’s neck. Luce’s head seemed to leap free from his body with a bright zeal, seemed to bound as if it were glad to be set free from ruined flesh, then scampered wildly across the arena floor, before slowing down and coming to a stop, staring up into the sky.

“And that’s
it!
” Cayley breathed in Heriot’s ear, alive with a bizarre excitement. While Heriot was horrified that anyone could be thrilled by a violent death, there was something in Cayley’s response he didn’t understand… something like relief. He turned and looked at Cayley with sudden curiosity. Around them the whole arena was erupting with a single shout, as if every person held between those pale, cupped hands of stone knew how to shout in chorus. It wasn’t a shout of joy or a shout of fury, but a simple shout of recognition… of concession. The Hero of Hoad was being recognized yet again. It might have been Luce, transfigured, but this shout was once again for Carlyon—Carlyon remade. Within a few bloody seconds Dysart had become the second Prince of Hoad, and with Betony Hoad determined to remain childless, he would eventually be heir to the Kingdom of Hoad. Heriot glanced sideways at him and saw a strange expression struggling on his face, an expression of horror melting into something else, as Dysart looked down at his headless brother, then glanced sideways toward Linnet, who was looking back toward him, also horrified at an emerging hope, yet defiantly hopeful all the same. Feeling like an intruder, Heriot
turned away from Linnet, only to find himself staring at her father, the Master of Hagen, and was suddenly aware that the Master was caught up in a dilemma so much his own he could never discuss it with anyone.

The failed challengers were always buried on Cassio’s Island and their names inscribed on the stone walls of the Hero’s house. There was calm and dignified feasting as Luce was laid out in glory, robed in silver, displayed for a day, his severed head joined to him once more, made respectable by a silver collar, his belly wound decently concealed. And then he was coffined and buried in the Hall of Challengers, embraced by stone rather than soil. Flanked by Luce’s father and brothers, Carlyon presided over the traditional Feast of the Victor, at the end of which he was embraced and congratulated dryly by the King. After this, the ceremonies of the challenge were finally over. Across the leagues, Diamond inexorably commanded the King and his court once more.

So they answered the call, riding back on a cloudy day, that long, bright procession, that worm of color, winding out of the Hero’s city. On the way to Cassio’s Island people had talked a little and thought a lot. On the way back to Diamond the progress was more disorderly. The procession
straggled at its edges; this time men and women mixed together, thinking less and talking more.

“Curiously enough, this is a good place to talk… here we’re surrounded by people but they’re all gossiping to one another, and no one is listening to us,” the Master of Hagen was saying to his daughter. “Linnet—the time has truly come and gone for you to marry.”

“You know I want to marry,” Linnet said. “And you know
who
I want to marry. Luce is dead, but Dysart takes his place.…”

“No!” said her father. “There has been another death—a death among the Dannorad. Shuba’s father has died. If you marry her brother, you will be an undisputed Queen. You won’t have to make do with a mad Prince, waiting until the King dies, and then again for that distant day when Betony Hoad chooses to die. Linnet, I want more than safety for you. I want glory.”

“You want glory for Hagen,” Linnet exclaimed, so loudly her father looked anxiously left and right.

“I do admit,” he said quietly, “I am tired of being the Lord of a land that exists merely as a mountainous county on the edge of Hoad. And you are my child. I love you. I want everything for you. Everything!”

“Dysart is everything to me,” said Linnet, but now she spoke very quietly indeed, and even if her father guessed what she was saying, he probably couldn’t hear her. “You want to use me to get everything for Hagen,” she said more audibly.

“Why not?” asked her father in a low voice. “Why not? We come and go, but the land is the land.”

***

So the procession wound on home. The horses were tired. The riders were tired. Heriot suddenly felt someone edging up beside him, and turned, half expecting Betony Hoad. But the intruder was Cayley.

“I’m moving up in the world,” Cayley said, and laughed joyously.

Somewhere inside Heriot’s head the occupant moved restlessly.
He means more than he’s letting on,
the occupant was telling Heriot,
but I can’t… I can’t quite…

“How did you get to be riding up here, mixing with the Lords?” Heriot asked, looking amused.

“Like I said! I’m moving up in the world,” repeated Cayley, grinning. “No one tried to stop me.”

“Luce! Luce!” sighed the wind in the tall grass on the edge of the road. “Luce is dead.”

I barely knew him,
Heriot said to the occupant.
But he was a living man yesterday morning. He woke up alive with his strength and skill and hope… and who truly mourns him?
Was that his own thought, or was it the occupant, or was it the land itself—the very land of Hoad—weeping for a lost son?

“Luce is dead,” Heriot said aloud, just to see how the words sounded coming out of his own mouth.

“He didn’t read it right. He hesitated,” said Cayley. “Like I told you, you’ve got to be quick. And you’ve got to laugh. Laughing gives you power. You’ve got to dodge from out under, laugh and then strike home.”

The procession moved on, wearily now, words winding around it, clashing and merging into one another. As it passed, the land sighed and stirred around it, trembling
a little, perhaps under the touch of the wind, then settled again. It had seen many processions come and go. The hills shrugged the glory of Kings and Heroes into nothing, settling back into their own ancient calm.

Somehow the world of Diamond had changed. The hills beyond the city might ignore the shifts of Kings and Heroes, but the city had Guard-on-the-Rock as a pulse. Luce’s challenge and death might have done nothing more than make certain Carlyon would remain the Hero for the foreseeable future, yet in a curious way, Heriot could feel a shift in the quality of the King’s Peace. At times it seemed to him that the stone walls whispered… that the echoing streets muttered… with news of changes.

“Betony,” Heriot whispered to himself, trying to work out the messages the city was trying to send him. “The King wants a reliable heir, but Betony refuses to be reliable. So the King wants to remake Betony. But how can you remake anyone so set in place? Betony Hoad is utterly himself. Not even a King can remake him.” He stood up, half looking for Cayley, though he already knew the boy was off in another part of Guard-on-the-Rock, working to make himself strong so he could be powerful as well as quick. Quickness might
be the skill of which he boasted, but he was determined to be as strong as possible.

Morning touched the trees, which reached out to catch the first sunlight, but it was time for Heriot to leave morning and the trees behind. He must desert his orchard and make for that gilded room of reception, its arches carved with waves and, where the arches intersected, stone faces, wild and yet still, peering down, seeming to mock the grandeur below. Sliding into the room, moving to his accepted place, Heriot smiled briefly up as if he were sharing a secret with them, then sat passively at the King’s elbow, a little behind the King’s great chair. Voices made declarations. The fanfares sounded like announcements repeated so often their meanings had become a line of nonsense. The King stood to receive the new ambassador from the Dannorad, and did not sit again until his guests were settled in the chairs the servants carried forward from the bright edges of the room. Then the talk began.