The Wizard (28 page)

Etela and her mother, and I saw her face when she heard it." "I'm a conjurer, Sir Able, or used to was. I'd do things for her, just little things, you know, and tell her 'twas real magic. I guess she believed me, or sometimes." To test him, I asked whether he had conjured up Uri. "That's the girl talkin', I know. I listen, even these days when I can't see. More'n ever these days, really. No, Master, I didn't. I heard her and sounds like she's crazy, but I didn't have to do with that, neither." Uri grinned like a wolf. I am afraid I smiled, too; but I told him that he was not to call me Master, that Toug was his master, not I. "I'm main sorry, Sir Able, it slipped out. It's square on my tongue. But you've the right of it, I belong to Master Toug now. Only he don't seem to have much use for me." I told him that would change. "That's so, Sir Able. Can I ask now?" "No. When I've finished with Uri here, perhaps. But before I go back to her, what was it you did for Etela that frightened her?" "Nothing, Sir Able. Just little things, you know. Took a coin out of her ear, and a egg once. Things like that." Uri sniffed. "Could you take a coin out of my ear?" "Not now, Sir Able, 'cause I don't have one. Maybe you could lend me? Just for a moment, you know? Gold's best, if you got gold."

CHAPTER TWENTYTHREE THE BATTLE OF UTGARD

I did, of course, in the purse Duke Marder had given me. Nevertheless, I turned to Uri. "Bring us a gold coin, and promptly. Any minting will dowhatever you can find." "For this?" She sounded angry. "Are you my slave, or have you dropped that pretense?" She knelt as Vil had. "There is no pretense, Lord." "Then do as you're told, and quickly." When she was gone, Mani muttered, "She'll steal it." "Of course she will." Vil cleared his throat, his homely, sightless face not quite turned to mine. "Maybe now? My arm's got wrenched" "In the fight at the marketplace." "Right. One hit me, maybe. I never done much." "A blind man fighting giants." "I can hear, and I can feel. I'm strong, too. I always was. In my trade it helps, but smithing got me stronger than I was when I come. Hammering, you know, and all that. So I thought maybe I could help, so I got one by the leg and threw him. Only the next one hit me or fetched me a kick and after that I couldn't do much. What it is, Sir Able" Uri returned, proudly holding a gold coin stamped with the features of King Gilling. "Here is a gold coin." I handed it to Vil. "Now take it from my ear if you can." "Ain't easy, Sir Able, conjuring when you can't see." "I never supposed it was easy, even for the sighted." "Is it real gold?" He bit the coin and swallowed it. "Not bad! 'Bout twelve carat. From the taste, you know. Want me to try to get it out of my belly?" Though he could not see me, I nodded. "If you can." "I'll try." His hands groped for me. "I got to touch your ears, Sir Able. Main sorry for that, but I got to, so's to know where they is. Hope my hands ain't too dirty." I told him to go ahead. "Taller'n I thought." It was somehow disquieting to have a face that showed evidence of many beatings this close to mine. "You can hear me, can't you?" I said I could. "Ought to hear better in a minute. Where's that Uri?" She said nothing until I told her she must answer. "Come here, Uri. I can't see, so you got to be eyes for me. Look in his ear, will you? You see that gold in there?" "Only his thoughts," Uri said, looking into my ear. "Why, you're blind as me. Watch sharp." He displayed a coin. "Where'd that come from, Uri? Tell Sir Able here." "From your ear, Lord." She grimaced. "So it appeared." I said, "May I see the coin again, Vil?" He handed me a large coin, much worn and tarnished. "This is a brass cup of Celidon," I told him. "The coin you had just now was gold." "No, it warn't, Sir Able. I know I said, but I didn't want you show you up in front of this girl and the boy that makes his cat talk. You see, Sir Able" "I do, and I saw it was gold. Produce it!" He knelt again, his blind eyes upturned, his hands outspread. "Am I a man would lie to you? Not never! Truthful Vil's what they call me, Master. You ask anybody." "And you, Truthful Vil, say the coin wasn't gold?" "I do, Master. Look here." He held out an empty hand. Uri said, "The coin I brought was gold, Lord." I nodded. "I'm looking, as you asked, Truthful Vil. But there's no gold in your hand." "There ain't?" He seemed genuinely puzzled. "No. None." "I can't see myself, Sir Able, being blind, you know. Only I feel it this minute feel the weight." He clenched his fist. "There! I got it!" He opened his hand once more, and a shinning coin lay in the palm. I took it. "This is a brass farthing, polished bright." "I know, Sir Able, 'twas the coin I showed you, Master. A brass one, only I'd rubbed it clean." "I had heard of conjurers, but until now I had never seen one. You must be one of the best." He bowed and thanked me. "Now I must require that gold piece of you. Uri and I will be through in a few minutes. When we are, she will have to return it to its owner. Do you know where it is, Uri?" She shook her head. "You must beat him, Lord." Vil raised his hands as if to fend off a blow. "You wouldn't hit a man what can't see, Sir Able. Not you!" "You're right," I told him, "I wouldn't. But I'd cut one open to see whether he'd really swallowed my gold." I drew my dagger so that he might hear the blade leaving the scabbard. "No one calls me Truthful Able, but I'm truthful in this: what I say I'll do, I'll do. Produce that coin." "I hid it under the cat, Sir Able." Mani rose and took two steps to his left, and the big gold coin of Jotunland Uri had brought lay on the windowsill. She picked it up. "Do you want to examine it, Lord?" I shook my head. "If you're satisfied, I'm satisfied." Vil said, "That's how we do, Sir Able. Only what we do is tell them it's a good ways away. Under that wagon over there, we'll say, or in the shoe of that man with the red hair. Him being, you know, the one that looks like he can run fast. If you've done everything right, why they believe it and look, and while they're doing it you run. Hide, if you can. I used to be good at it. Course I couldn't, now, but it's how I used to do anytime somebody fetched gold." Uri said, "Surely you have seen enough now, Lord, to understand why the child fears him." "Seen enough, but not heard enough. I'll do that later. You want me to come to Aelfrice at once?" She nodded. "To fight Kulili for you. Not long ago, Baki wanted me to come to Aelfrice to fight Garsecg. I won't do either one 'til I finish here." "You say years would pass here, Lord, but the difference is not as great as you suppose. You may take a year hereten!" "I'll come when I'm ready. When I do, I'll fight Kulili as I promised. If I live, I may or may not lead you against Garsecgno promises. Now take that coin back." She faded as I spoke, and was gone. Mani said, "Just between the three of us, and before she comes back to spy, do you think you can beat this Garsecg?" I shrugged. "I killed Grengarm." "And he killed you, dear owner." I could not help smiling. "You see, you know more about it than I do, Mani." "I don't even know who Kulili is." "You won't learn it from me today. Do you know who Garsecg is?" Mani looked smug as only a cat can. "He's a dragon." "Who told you?" "You did, dear owner. I asked if you could beat Garsecg and you replied that you had killed Grengarm. Grengarm was a dragonToug told me about your battle with him. Therefore Garsecg is another dragon. Elementary. You know who stabbed King Gilling, too, don't you?" I shook my head. "Of course you do. I heard what you told Lord Thiazi. You know, you just can't prove it." "I don't want to," I told him, and turned to Vil. "Mani here wanted to be the last to talk to me,and both girls have had their shot. What do you want to talk about?" "Help, sir. That's all. Can I say first off nothin' I heard will go farther? I don't think you'd like me blabbing it, and I won't." I thanked him. "Master Toug's talked to me, sir. He says I'm his only I'll be free once we get south. That true, Sir Able? Seemed like he believed it." "As far as I know. I don't know much more about our country than your master does. Less, perhaps." "Well, Sir Able, I'm blind. You wonder why I fought 'em? Why we all did? I can't ever forgive it. Never. I wish I could, only I can't." "Once I dreamed of returning here with an army and driving them out," I told him. "I doubt that I ever will." "So the thing is, Sir Able . . ." He groped for me, and I gave him my hand. "The thing is, how'm I going to eat when we get south? I know the conjuring trade and can still do it some. You see how I worked them coins?" "No," I said. "I watched you closely, but I did not." "Only I can't live like that no more. If I was to take their gold boy and run . . ." He laughed bitterly. "How far'd I get, you think?" Mani murmured, "You told us you could hide. I do that at times myself." "You got eyes. A man that can't see can't keep out of sight. If I was to try now, you'd laugh." Vil's face had never turned from mine. He seemed to collect himself, and said, "I got my new master, Sir Able. Only he wants to be a farmer like his pa. People like that, they don't have enough to eat. That's why I left to start with. What're they goin' to do with a slave that can't see?" "I would hope them too kind to drive him out," I said. "So I thought I might ask him to sell me while he's still here." Vil drew a deep breath. "The others, they went to Sir Svon, and he's goin' to is what I think. That's Rowd, and Gif and Alca. He'll let 'em go cheap and raise what he can. The women ain't worth much, but Rowd ought to fetch a bit. Only there's the girl and her mother, Sir Able." "Etela and Lady Lynnet? I don't think you have to worry about Toug's sellin' them." "How it was at Master Logi's, Sir Able, was a woman for each man. Gif for Rowd, you know, and Alca for Sceef. So Lynnet for me, it was supposed to be. Only she wasn't right, Sir Able. Not right . . . Maybe I ought not say. Sometimes we did, you know? Only not often, and I never did feel right about it. But I tried to keep track of the girl. You won't trust nothing I say. I know that and don't blame you." "That depends on what it is, Truthful Vil." Wearied by the hassock, which afforded no rest for my back, I climbed into the chair it served. "I didn't touch her, nor let anybody. You take my meaning? It was gettin' worse as she got older. There's them that'll hump a pig. Maybe you think I'm jokin'." "No." "Makin' monsters, for what's born of such you wouldn't like to meet, and they live sometimes. So there's them that would've jumped her in a minute. I took care and kept her close, and spanked her, too, if she talked back or run off. Said I'd turn her into a doll to keep her close by. So she's feared, Sir Able, like you said. Only I . . ." "Love her." He coughed. "Yes, sir. And her mama too. Her mama's a fine, fine woman. A high-class woman." "A noblewoman, the daughter of a baronet." "Is she, Sir Able? I didn't know. You said I loved Etela, and you weren't wrong neither. Only ..." "I understand. What do you want of me?" "Help, Sir Able. That's all. Etela, she'll stay with Master Toug if she can. But her mama can't look out for her nor for herself neither. I would if I could. Butbut ..." "My owner is a kind and a chivalrous knight," Mani said; there was a note in his voice I had not heard before. "If I could work for you, Sir Able? After we get south, I mean. I wouldn't ask no pay. Not a farthin'. Only that you'd help with Lynnet, and Etela too if she needs it." "Lady Lynnet may not want your help," I told him. "I know it, Sir Able. Only that's not to say she don't need it. She ain't right. And many's the time I've took care when she didn't want me, and Etela the same. You ask her, and if you get truth out of her you'll hear it." "No doubt." "Only she'll cry. It'll be a while, you know? Before she gets over that. Will you help me, sir? All right, I'm blind. But you ain't, you can see these arms." He flexed his muscles, which were impressive. "I'll work hard. If you don't think I'm working enough, you tell me, Master." Mani muttered, "Work hard and steal." "You tell that boy to swaller it, Master. Not from you, nor from Master Toug, nor any other friends you got I won't." "All right," I told him, "you may serve me in the south, provided we can find nothing better." He surprised me, not for the last time. Groping toward the sound of my voice, he found my feet, which reached the edge of the chair, and kissed them. Before I could recover, he was at the door. He turned, and where his empty eye sockets had been, there were two staringin fact, glaringeyes of bright blue. Then the door shut behind him. "That was a trick," Mani said. "I know. I wish it hadn't been." "Pouk's was better." Mani sprang from his windowsill to the floor, trotted over to my chair, and with an astonishing leap caught the upholstery of the seat and pulled himself up. "Pouk made them think he was blind when he wasn't." "He was already blind in one eye," I said. "He has been as long as I've known him. Was that what you wanted to talk about, Mani? The thing so private you wanted to speak last?" "No." He setded into my lap. "If you'd rather not say it, or prefer to wait . . ." "I've helped you. Haven't I earned a few minutes?" I agreed, and sat stroking him for some while. Gylf (who had gone to the stable) scratched at the door; Mani asked me not to admit him; I called to him through the door, asking him to look in on Toug. "I ducked into that place with you," Mani began. "The Room of Lost Love? I know." "You went with the madwoman, but I wasn't interested in whatever love she might have lost. I went looking for my own. That was a mistake." I continued to stroke him and said nothing. "Once I was a free spirit. Once I was a normal cat, not troubled by lies." Mani spoke slowly, and as it seemed, mostly to himself. "The first is the finest of existences, the second the finest of lives. I have lost both." He looked up at me, and there was far too much sorrow in his forlorn black face for me to find it amusing. Schildstarr sat the throne that had been Gilling's as if he had been there all his life, and Thiazi stood beside him with his gold staff as if he had served Schildstarr's father before him. It was one of the times when I could see that the Angrborn were foreign, not just to us but to everything; the Valfather was not foreign to us at all: he was ours, as we were his. "Your Majesty." Beel bowed almost to the stone floor. "I congratulate you, not on my own behalf alone, but on my king's, upon your ascension to the throne of your ancestors." Nor, I decided, were Uri, Baki, and the other Aelf alien in the same way. Kulili had modeled them on us. "Hail King Schildstarr!" "Hail!" Garvaon, Svon, and I, standing behind Beel and Idnn, pounded the floor with the butts of our lances. Neither was Michael alien like that. He was, I think, what the Valfather himself might aspire to become, somebody good the way that a good blade is good, and one who saw the face of the Most High God. Idnn's lovely voice rang even among the cloudy rafters of that hideous hall. "Your Majesty! We, Idnn, a Queen of Jotunland, most humbly beg a boon." Even the dragons of Muspel belong to Muspel. They are demons to us, but not to themselves. "Speak, Queen Idnn." Those oversized eyes, bigger than the eyes of owls, were made to see through the freezing black of Old Night; and Old Night (I have been there, although only on its edges) is not any of the seven worlds. It is not that the Angrborn always seem horrible. You get used to them. It is that they really are, that being horrible is being like the Angrborn. "Our king is dead. Our husband is dead as well, for they were one and the same. It is the custom of our people, of the people of the south, Your Majesty, to mourn a husband for a year, a king for ten. Thus you see us in black, and in black we shall go for eleven years. Far to the south, Your Majesty, stands the castle of our girlhood. It is nothing compared to this Utgard of yours, yet it is dear to us, for it holds the room in which we slept as a child. With Your Majesty's most generous, most compassionate leave we would go to that