The Wizard (26 page)

the king and Borgalmir killed him." "Absurd!" "No more so than lots of other guesses. You wanted a guess. Okay, you've got one." "You risk your boons. Both of them." Etela said, "My mama isn'tisn't always like I would like her to be." "She was taken from her home," I made my voice gentle, "and enslaved here. She's an attractive woman, and she may have been used in ways you can't understand. The shock disordered her mind. Soon we'll go back to Celidonyour mother and you, Toug and Gylf and Mani and me, and even this Vil. Your mother will return home, and though the change may be slow, I think you'll find she gets better." Thiazi, who had gone to the window, turned back to us. "I have not said I would not treat her. One of youyou there, sick woman. Put more wood on the fire." Etela did it. "Toug says there isn't much more, 'n we got to be careful." "Lord Thiazi believes things will return to normal soon," I explained. "So do I." "Your boons . . ." Thiazi's voice filled the room. "Your boons depend on your answering three questions. Questions I will put here and now. Answer, and I'll grant them. Refuse as you've refused already, and I'll grant neither." "You want me to talk," I said. "Okay, before I hear your other questions I'll say three things. My first is that I didn't refuse to answer your question. I don't know the answer and I told you so. My guess, if I made one, might be more valuable than this girl's. But would it be worth, as much as yours? You know it wouldn't. You were here both times. Your opinion deserves far more respect." "Do you accuse me?" "Of course not. I won't accuse anybodythat's what you're mad about. I'm just saying you're bound to know more. What are the questions you mentioned?" "I ask for your second and third remarks." "Okay. I remark that you've bound yourself to grant both my remaining boons, though you don't know the last." "If you answer my questions, speaking out without quibbling about what your honor requires, I'll grant it. Assuming I can." For a second or two, Thiazi's huge hands appeared to wash each other. "Whatever it is." Toug said, "I have an idea." Thiazi nodded. "We need some. Let us hear it." "Like Sir Able said, he wasn't there when the king got stabbed the first time. He was down south in the mountains, fighting anybody who tried to come through a pass. This morning when the king got killed, he was pretty close, riding on the air with Queen Idnn. But all of us thought he was way far away. So maybe the person's afraid of him and wouldn't do anything except when he was gone." "Possible, but unlikely." Thiazi paced the room again, an austere gray eminence, and his steps sounded even through the ankle-deep carpet. "Until today, he was here for no more than an hour or two. Sir Able, what is your third remark?" "That though I lose my boons, you could lose more. Your foes, and even your friends, will accuse you of ingratitude." "My friends accuse me of nothing, since I have none." Etela said, "We'll be your friends, if you'll let us." "My foes accuse me of ingratitude already, and worse. Here is my first question. I warn you that you must answer all three." I nodded. "I understand." "Did King Arnthor send Lord Beel with instructions to assassinate King Gilling?" "No." Thiazi paused in his pacing to glare at me. "A simple yes or no will not be sufficient. Explain yourself." "Certainly, My Lord. I'm not King Arnthor's councillor, nor have I ever been. His reputation, however, is that of a hard but honorable man." Thiazi snorted. "My second question. In what ways will King Arnthor benefit by King Gilling's death?" "In none, My Lord. A king in Utgard could forbid the raids that lay waste to the north. No king can't. Besides, King Gilling took a share of the proceeds, which discouraged raiding. As long as there's no king, the raiders can keep whatever they get, and they'll raid more." "While we war among ourselves, we'll have neither time nor strength to spare for raiding." I nodded. "My Lord's wiser than I am, though many may prefer profit to killing their relativesstill more, to being killed by them." "My final question. You're to imagine that I am King Arnthor. I have explained to you my reasons for wishing King Gilhng dead, and although they may not satisfy you, they satisfy me. I then confide that I've chosen Lord Beel to act for me. Would you approve my choice?" "Absolutely, My Lord. When failure is preferable to success, the course of true wisdom is to choose the man most apt to fail. May I speak freely?" "You may. In fact, I desire it." "As I told you, I know nothing directly of King Arnthor. I've never seen him. But I traveled with Lord Beel through Celidon and the Mountains of the Mice, and some way across the Plain of Jotunland. I feel I know him well. For diplomacy, he's the manlevelheaded, courteous, and tactful, with few passions beyond family pride and a father's natural love for his daughter. If I were a king who wanted peace with my neighbor, I'd look for somebody just like Lord Beel. But for an assassination ..." I shook my head. Etela said, "Doesn't Lord Beel know magic, too? That's what Toug said. If he does 'n wanted to kill somebody, he'd do it like that." Thiazi sat down and stared at Etela, who met his gaze boldly. At length he said, "Would I be a fool to treat a child's counsel as serious?" I smiled. "A fourth question, My Lord?" "Let us make it so." Mani cleared his throat, a soft and almost apologetic sound. "You limited yourself to three questions, My Lord Thiazi. Allow me to answer that, and so preserve your honor. Wisdom is wisdom, and doesn't become foolishness in the mouth of another speaker. A child's counsel should be heeded if it is wise. But not otherwise." "Could not the same be said of a cat's?" "It would take a wise man, My Lord Thiazi, to discover foolishness in a cat's counsel." "Just so." Thiazi bent toward Etela. "My child, we do not know that magic was not employed. It may have been used to render the assassin invisible, for example." "I didn't know that," Etela said. "Naturally not. You have a lively intelligence, but little experience of the world, and less learning. You must take both into account." "Yes, sir. I mean, My Lord." "Would you laugh if I were to tell you that an invisible creature has been seen in this keep?" "No, sir, I wouldn't. Only I wouldn't understand 'cause you just said invisible." "Invisibility is never complete," Thiazi told her, "as every grimoire dealing with topic asserts. Beings rendered invisible by magic are partially or entirely visible under certain circumstances. These circumstances vary with the spell employed. Rain and strong and direct sunlight are perhaps the most common." Clearly impressed, Etela said, "Oooh . . ." "Invisible entities sometimes cast shadows, more or less distinct, by which their presence may be detected. They also leave footprints in mud or snow, though that does not really represent a loss of invisibility." "Invisible cats," Mani added, "are completely invisible only at night." "I did not know that," Thiazi said, "and am pleased to have learned it. I repeat: would you be surprised to learn that an invisible being has been glimpsed in this keep?" After a glance at Lynnet, Etela nodded. "One has been, and the first glimpses followed Lord Beel's arrival. I would suspect this being of having stabbed our king, were it not that it seems to fracture the cervical vertibrae. For obvious reasons, invisible beings rarely bear arms. When our king was stabbed, five others had their necks broken. The fact has been lost to sight in our distress over the wounding of our king. Yet it remains." I snorted. "Is this supposed to implicate Lord Beel? It seems to me it makes him less likely than ever. If the being is hisI don't think it isand he wanted to harm King Gilling, wouldn't he use it? If it isn't, and it didn't stab the king, why are we talking about it?" Mani raised a paw. "Well said. May I add that in my opinion you've answered Lord Thiazi's questions as required?" Thiazi nodded. "You'll receive the boon you've askedI'll do what I can for this slave, although I can't promise great improvement. What is your final boon?" I had to think about things then; it was my last chance to turn back. When I looked up, I said, "I love a certain lady. Who she is doesn't matter, she's real and I can't be happy without her. I've returned here to Jotunland for her sake, from a far country." Thiazi nodded. "I've been told the Sons of Angr never love. If that's right, why did King Gilling rise from his bed and rush out to his death at the sound of Queen Idnn's voice?" "You have been misinformed." Thiazi's words might have been the wind moaning through a skull. "We love. Shall I supply the fact which misled your informant?" I shrugged. "If you please, My Lord." "We are never loved." "Not even by each other?" "No. Your final boon?" "All my life I've been aware ofof an emptiness in me, My Lord. There was a time when I acquired a new shield, and my servant, who's my friend too, suggested that it be painted with a heart." I hesitated. "I'm called Sir Able of the High Heart, My Lord." "I am aware of it." "Though I have never known why. My friend suggested that a heart might be painted on that shield. I was very proud of itof the shield, I mean." Toug looked away. "And it came to me that if a heart were painted on it, it would have to be an empty one, thin lines of red dividing, curving upward, and coming together at the bottom. I said no. I felt, you see, that my heart was filled with love for the lady whose love brought me here. Just the same, a heart on my shield would need to be empty, and I knew it. You've got a room, a famous room since I heard of it long ago, with Here Abides Lost Love carved in the door. Is that true?" Slowly Thiazi nodded. "From what you said, I understand why you've got it and why you value it. It can't be one of these doorsthere's nothing carved on them. Another door in this suite?" Thiazi said nothing. "May I, only once and as a great favor, go in? It's the third boon I ask." "You will have to come out again." Every word seemed weighted with double significance. "I never thought I could stay there." "I will grant you both boons." For a moment it seemed Thiazi would rise from his seat; he stayed where he was, his face gray, his huge hands grasping the arms of his chair. "But you must do something for me. You must take the slave woman with you. Will you do that?" "Lynnet? Where's the door?" By a slight motion of his head, Thiazi indicated one of the five doors, the narrowest, a door of wood so pale that it looked almost white. "Through there?" I stood and took Lynnet's hand. "Come with me, My Lady." "Manticores and marigolds." She rose, and her rising was neither awkward nor graceful, and neither swift no slow. I said, "She's sleepwalking." Thiazi shook his head. "A terrible rage burns in her." I looked at him. "I'm still a kida boy stillin a lot of things." "We envy your good fortune." "Is she really angry? At this moment?" Etela said, "Mama never gets mad." "I would not advise you to look into her eyes." Toug cleared his throat. "I told you a little about the battle, Sir Able. She waswas fighting then. With the whip that came with the wagon we bought. I guess I didn't say the Frost Giants were scared of her, but they were. She was blinding giants with it." I said, "I didn't know that." "I know I didn't say I was scared of her, too. She was on our side, but I was scared anyhow." "Yet you fought on." Toug shrugged. "Then Sir Garvaon came with men-at-arms, and they were scared about having to fight, and I could see it. I saw how scared they were, and I thought you tough men, you don't know half, not even half." Thiazi said softly, "Angr was our mother's name, Sir Able. We are descended from her, all of us. Thus we know something of anger. I tell you that this woman must control hers or destroy everything in her path. She seems a woman of wax to you?" "Something like that, yes." "You will have seen a candle stub thrown into a fire. Remember it." "I'll try. Come, Lady. I'll open the door for you." Thirty steps took us to the door Thiazi had indicated, and although it was narrowest of all, it was wide and high for me; I had to reach over my head to lift the latch. When I touched it, I saw the graceful script of Aelfrice in the pallid wood: WHERE LOST LOVE LIVES The door seemed to weigh nothing, and it may be that we stepped through without opening it.

CHAPTER TWENTYTWO LOST LOVES

Night blacker than the blackest night of storm enveloped us. I heard the rush of waters, as I had when I had breasted tides and dark, uncharted currents with Gar secg. There was a great pounding, swift and very deep. I tried to imagine what sort of creature might make such a noise, and the image that leaped into my mind was that of Org, green as leaves and brown as bark, alone in a forest clearing and pounding the trunk of a hollow tree with a broken limb. Under my breath I murmured, "What's that?" And Lynnet heard me and said, "It is my heart." As soon as she spoke, and I knew she was right and wrong, that it was my own heart, not hers. For a long time we walked through that dark, and I timed my steps and my movements to the thuddings of my heart. The darkness parted, as at the word of the Most High God. What had been dark was pearly mist, and I saw that there was grass, such lush grass as horses love, underfoot; the mist spangled it with dew. "This is a better place," Lynnet told me; perhaps I did not speak, but I agreed. Sunbeams lanced the mist, and as it had made the dew, so it now made a colonnade of mighty oaks. She began to run. "Goldenlawn!" She turned to look back as she spoke, and I have, on my honor, never seen more joy than I saw in that wasted face. Beside Sheerwall, the castle would have been an outworksuch a gray wall as a strong boy might fling stones over, a round keep prettily made, and a square stone house of four stories and an attic. It was, in short, such a castle as a knight with a dozen stout men-at-arms might have held against fifty or a hundred outlaws. Nothing more. Yet it was a place very easy to love, and made me think, all the while that I was there, of the Lady's hall in Skai. The Lady's Folkvanger stands to it as a blossoming tree to a single violet, but they breathed the same air. On its gates stood painted manticores. Their jaws held marigolds as the jaws of cows sometimes hold buttercups, and there were marigolds at their feet, and to left and right of them more marigolds, not painted but real, for the moat was as dry as Utgard's and had been planted as one plants a garden, while manticores of stone stood before the gates. There were servants and maiden sisters, fair young women who might have married in an instant, and anyone they chose. All were filled with wonder that Lynnet, whom they thought never to see again, should unexpectedly return; and after them, a grave old nobleman with a white mustache and the scars of many battles, and a gay gray lady like a wild dove, who fluttered all the while and moaned for joy. "This is Kirsten," Lynnet told me, "dear, dear Kirsten who died when I was fourteen, and my own dear sister Leesha who died in childbirth. Father, may I present Sir Able of the High Heart? Sir Able, this is my father, Lord Leifr." "Slain by the Frost Giants who stormed Goldenlawn," Lord Leifr told me, smiling, and offered his hand. "My mother, Lady Lis." She took my hand in both of hers, and the love in those fluttering hands and her small, shy face would have won me at once even if I had been ill-disposed to her and her husband. "May you stay with us a long, long while, Sir Able, and may every moment of your stay be happy." Soon came a banquet. It was night outside, and snowing, and when we had eaten and drunk our fill, and sung old songs, and played games, we walked in a garden bright with light and summer flowers. "This is mother's grotto," Lynnet explained, "a sort of pretty cave made by our gardeners. The fashion at court was to have a grotto when my parents married, a place where lovers could kiss and hold hands out of sightand out of sun, too, on hot days. My father had it built to please my mother before he brought her here." It made me think of the cave in which I had lain on moss with Disiri, but I said nothing of that. "Only I'm afraid of it, and I didn't know I was until I started talking about it, I suppose because my sisters and I weren't allowed in there when we were children. So I'm not going to go in, but you can if you'd like to see it." She plainly expected me to go, so I did. It was not that I imagined I might actually find Disiri thereI knew I would not. But the memory the grotto evoked was strong and sweet; and I hoped that if I went in, it might be stronger still. Filled with that hope, I descended the little stone stair, stepped across a tiny rivulet, and entered the grotto. There could be no dragon here, I knew, nor any well reaching the sea of Aelfrice. Nor was I wrong about those things. In their places I found a floor of clean sand and a rough tunnel that seemed to plumb the secrets of the hill, and then a familiar voice that mewed, "Sir Able? Sir Able? It's you, I know. I smell your dog on your clothes. Is this the way out?" "Mani?" I stopped and felt him rub my leg. "I didn't know you were in here. This is a strange place." "I know," Mani told me. And then, "Pick me up." "Some of these people are dead, and it doesn't seem to make any difference." He only mewed in response to that; when I picked him up and carried him, he was trembling. I will not speak of the time I spent in the grotto. The time of Skai is not the time of Mythgarthr, nor is the time of Aelfrice. The time of the Room of Lost Loves is different again, and perhaps not time at all, but merely the reflection of time. Etela said none of us had stayed inside long. Mani raised his head and sniffed. Hearing him (he was cradled in my arms) I sniffed too. "I smell the sea." "Is that what it is? I've never been there. Your dog talks about it. I don't think he liked it much." I said, "He was chained in Garsecg's cave under the sea. I'm sure he didn't like that." "That's all right," Mani told me, "it's only wrong to confine cats." He leaped from my arms; soon I heard him ahead of me: "There's light this way, and water noise." Before long I could see it for myself and hear the surge and crash of waves. I felt that I was coming home. The gray stones of the grotto appeared to either hand, and I (recalling its mouth and the rivulet across which I had stepped) paused to look behind me, for it seemed possible at that moment that I had become confused and was walking back the way I had come. Faint and far was the mouth behind me. Faint and far, but not nearly as faint or as far as it ought to have been. I had walked the better part of a league; and yet I could see the rough circle still, and glimpse rocks and ferns beyond it. "There's a woman here!" Mani called. I knew then, and holding up Eterne I ran. Parka sat spinning as before, but her eyes left the thread she spun for a moment to look up at me as she said, "Sir Able of the High Heart." I felt that I had never known what that phrase meant until I heard it in her mouth; I knelt and bowed my head and muttered, "Your servant always, My Lady." "Do you need another string?" "No," I said. "The one you gave has served me well, though it disturbs my sleep and colors my dreams." "You must put it from you when you sleep, Sir Able." "I would not treat them so, My Lady. They tell me of the lives they had, and hearing them I love my own more." "Why have you come?" she asked; I explained as well as I could, not helped by Mani, who interrupted and commented more often than I liked. When I had finished, Parka pointed beyond the breakers. "It is out there? What I seek?" She nodded. "I can swim," I told Mani, "but I can't take you. Nor can I take my sword or my clothes." He said, "That mail would sink you in a minute." It was not true, but I agreed. "Will you remain here with Parka and watch my things 'til I return?" "Your possessions," Parka told me, "are not here." Nevertheless I stripped, and laid my mail, my leather jerkin, my trousers and so forth on a flat stone, and put my boots beside them. Parka spun on, making lives for we who think we make them for ourselves. How good it was to swim in the sea! I knew then that much of my sea-strength had left me, for I felt it returning; and although I knew Garsecg for a demon, I wished that he were swimming at my side, as he had in days irrecoverable. It is well, I think, for us to learn to tell evil from good; but it has its price, as everything does. We leave our evil friend behind. To what I swam I did not know. Seeing nothing ahead, I swam a long way under water, then breached the surface and swam on, still seeing nothing. The bones of Grengarm lay in this sea, and somewhere in it dwelt Kulili, for the bottom of the sea of Mythgarthr (and I felt I was in Mythgarthr still) lies in Aelfrice. I resolved to go to the bottom before I was done, and come to land in Aelfrice, and search there for Disiri. For I did not know then that one finds none but lost loves in the Room of Lost Love, and my love for herlove fiery as the blood of the Angrborn, yet purecould not be lost, not in the Valkyrie's kiss or the Valfather's mead. Surfacing again, I saw the Isle of Glas. What love, I asked myself, did I lose here? None, surely. For a time I was filled with thoughts of Garsecg and Uri and Baki. At last it came to me that had I been able to recall that love, it would not be lost. Lady Lynnet, in her madness, had forgotten her parents, her sisters, and her home, had remembered only marigolds and manticores and the fighting tradition of her family, which had been in her blood, not in her wounded mind. Thus it was that although her mind had failed, her hand had itched for a sword, and found one in the whip. It is not the weapon that wins, no, not even Eterne. The beaches of the Isle of Glas are like no other. Perhaps they are gems ground finecertainly, that is how they appear. Nor are its stones as other stones. Its grass is fine, soft, short, and of a green no man can describe; and I believe that Gylf, who could not see colors well, could have seen that one. I have seen no other trees like those along its beaches; their leaves are of a green so dark as to appear black, but silver beneath, so that a breath of wind changes them to silver in an instant. Their bark appears to be naked wood, though it is not. When I think back upon the moments I came ashore, it seems to me I cannot have had long to admire the beach, or grass, or trees; yet it seemed long then. The sun stood fixed, half visible, half veiled by cloud; and I, with all eternity at my disposal, marveled at the grass. "Oh, son . . ." It was a peasant woman. I had seen many fairer, though she was fair. "You are my son." I knew that she was wrong, and it came to me that if I were to lie upon the ground, and she to bend above me, I would see her in the way I had just recalled her. Then I understood that she was the fairest of women. "You and Berthold suckled these breasts, Able." I said he was not here, and tried to explain that he would not have forgotten her, that he had been old enough to walk and speak when she vanished. "Read this." She held out the tube of green glass. Shamefaced, I admitted that I could not read the runes of Mythgarthr, only the script of Aelfrice. "This is not Mythgarthr," she said, "it is the country of the heart." I unrolled the scroll and read it. I set it down here as I recollect it. You will wonder, Ben, as I wondered, whether she was not our mother as well as Berthold's and his brother's. I think that she was both.