Young Warriors (19 page)

1

THERE IN THE ROOM of Reception and Debate—there before the King himself—light flared along the blade of a knife. One of the men who, only a moment ago, had been standing meekly behind one of the Dannorad envoys was darting across the room, making for the King's Magician—Heriot, the Magician of Hoad. A knife! A knife flourished where, it was understood, the only weapons were to be artful words and the cunning with which diplomatic men wielded them. For a moment Heriot was terrified, yet in that exact moment of terror, quicker even than the light skimming the surface of the blade, he made an inner connection—something that came and went before he could quite grasp it—and drew, from within himself, a weapon of his own strange kind.

“Freeze!”
he found himself ordering.

Halfway across the room, the man locked in midstride, shaking and crying out as he strained forward, then toppled, unable to lower that threatening arm but still able to cry out: “I felt you in my head, twisting . . . twisting like a worm in an apple.”

Heriot looked toward the knife, still locked into the man's trembling hand, then away to one side. He felt sorry for the man, but a magician must survive as best he can.

“I
have
to be a worm,” he muttered softly as the King's guards burst in, bending to lift the man, to unlock the knife from those shivering fingers, then hustling him, still shouting, out of the room. “It's what I am!” Heriot told himself, though he was not sure just what he was. He had been uncertain of this for years.

“You might even be the Hidden Warrior,” said Lord Glass in a soft voice, lips close to his ear. “Perhaps you really are that legend.” No one but Heriot heard him. The Dannorad envoys, looking every bit as horrified as the men of Hoad at the gross violation that had just taken place, were clustered around the King, apologizing. But one envoy had something to add to his apology.

“Of course there is no excuse for such an event,” the envoy said. “But surely in civilized debate, men's heads should be inviolable territories.” He shot a glance of severe dislike at Heriot. “Worms should have no place in the presence of a king.”

“He is not a worm—he is my Magician,” said the King. “After all, we authorities do our best to read each other's thoughts, do we not? My Magician is just better at thought-reading than most people. And those who tell the truth have nothing to fear.”

“Well, Magician,” the King said a little later, when the Dannorad envoys had retreated, bowing and still apologizing. “It seems you can make a formidable weapon of yourself. But first things first! Why did the Dannorad servant make for you like that? What do you have to tell us?”

The Hidden Warrior,
thought Heriot, hearing Lord Glass's words all over again. That magical figure, that haunting possibility, promised in so many Hoadish stories and legends.
They can call me a warrior over and over again because they
like the idea of warriors, but it is not what I am.
He cleared his throat.

“I didn't read much, Lord King,” he replied. “These days the Dannorad keep their deep plotters at home and send us men who carry single messages and not much else. But there was one thing.”

The King leaned back in his chair. “So?” he said.

“That man at the envoy's elbow had heard some whisper of a plan to assassinate someone close to Your Majesty. He did not know who was to be killed, but the rumor of it was running around in his head. Not so much like a worm in an apple—more like a rat in a cage.”

“A plot against one of my sons, perhaps?” asked the King.

“I couldn't tell,” Heriot said. “The thought was smudged. He'd just picked up a whisper of it, and here in this room he remembered what he had heard.” He looked over at the table where the princes and the Lords of Consultation sat. “You lot should be careful. That's all.”

Later he was dismissed and stepped out and away, leaving the Council behind him. As he entered the first courtyard, the guards who always escorted him through the castle dropped back a few steps, and Heriot felt himself free to tremble.
What am I?
he thought again, gripping his shaking hands behind his back.
What am I? And what was that connection?
And then:
The Hidden Warrior . . . that hero of children's
stories! Perhaps after all . . .

And as he played with the idea, he felt as if the city— the city of Diamond, jewel of the land of Hoad—had opened its great mouth and swallowed him. All in a moment he was devoured—digested. All in a moment he became the city . . . became its braided streets, gardens, marketplaces, and stalls, its changing maze; became an ancient question being asked over and over again. He stood still, eyes closed, until the thought that possessed him fell away, as he had known it would, and he became once more a country boy with inexplicable powers, misplaced in a city whose rich heart was walled away from its own savage edges—edges that might assail it, yet also make it strong.
I've lived in this city for years now,
he thought.
I still don't know it. But I don't know myself. How did
I freeze that man? The command came and went too quickly to be
understood.
He took a step; stopped once more, so suddenly that he stumbled in midstride; and then straightened, to stand staring blankly into the air inches in front of his nose.
How
do I stop you from eating me?
he asked the city—a silent question.
Must I be the one to do the eating? Eat you? All right!
Tonight I'll test myself against the edge—with any luck, someone
else will try to kill me. And either they will kill me or I'll make
that connection again—solve that part of my own puzzle, at least!

2.

Heriot passed through the castle gate, automatically showing his medallion of passage. Guards fell back, watching him go. The great castle became a stony garment he was shrugging away.

They call me a warrior because “warrior” is one of their compliments,
he thought.
They're trying to reassure me with a compliment. But what am I, really?
He came to a standstill for a third time, this time on the edge of the King's garden. And as he stood there, frowning, he heard his name called, turned, and saw the young Lord Roth striding along the narrow path that curved around the edge of the garden, waving and laughing as he came.

Heriot greeted his friend with huge relief, glad to escape into lightheartedness. Roth laughed at his expression, flinging an arm around his shoulder.

“Let you out on your own, have they?” he asked. “And who did you betray today?”

Heriot's initial relief faded. He looked down the road, his gaze leaping along the retreating line of ancient metal lampions in which flares would be lighted that evening.

“No one!” he said.

“What? No reading the secret thoughts of our adversaries?” Roth asked, somewhat mockingly. Heriot shrugged.

“Look! I can't automatically read everyone,” he said vaguely. “Some people are closed in. I can't tell a thing about them. Others—well, it's as if they open up wide to me . . . and their secrets are set out like lines of a poem. And yes, I sometimes do read those poems to the King. It's what I was brought here to do.” Then he saw Roth was laughing at him, and he sighed and laughed too. “Luckily for you, I don't read friends,” he said. “Weren't you born a Dannorad man?”

“Born, not bred. I've lived in Hoad so long I count myself totally Hoadish,” Roth replied rather defensively. Then he asked, “Wasn't it Dannorad men the King was talking to today?”

“Yes,” said Heriot. “And—no harm in telling you; there won't be any secret about it because they'll set guards around the princes, I think—I did read something. There's a threat against someone close to the King. I don't know who.”

Roth looked at him incredulously. “Did you tell them?” he asked.

“I told what I could,” Heriot replied. “But before I did my telling, one of them came at me with a knife. I stopped him . . . froze him . . . and I don't know how I did it. And it's thrown me—saving myself all in the heart of a second, without knowing how.”

They had come to the edge of the grove of trees—part orchard, part forest—that history had flung around the King's castle like a careless cloak. Heriot's cottage, an old gardener's hut, stood in a curve of apple trees. Under the branches, something was dancing and spinning in the dappled light.

“Your servant boy, the street rat!” exclaimed Roth. “He's growing up, isn't he? Nearly as tall as I am now. Hey! He's holding a sword.”

“He dances, and that sword's his partner,” Heriot said. “Has to be. He dreams of being a warrior—a true warrior, not one like me—and plays warrior games.”

“Every street rat in the city plays warrior games,” said Roth, losing interest.

“Now then,” Heriot said. “Come to the cottage. We can sit on the bench beside the door, drink cider, and talk about books.”

“I'll walk on by this time,” Roth said. “I've got things to do. You know how it is. I'll call in later, maybe.” He hesitated, looking at Heriot with a troubled expression. “You will stay here—here in your special place, where you'll be safe, won't you?” Heriot nodded, not really listening. Cayley was coming to meet them in a series of somersaults and cartwheels.

“Hey! What's wrong?” Roth asked.

“Nothing's wrong!” said Heriot. “Why should anything be wrong?”

“You looked—I don't know—startled, as if you were seeing your street rat for the first time.”

“Everything astonishes a magician,” Heriot muttered. “Especially the things he already knows.”

He and Roth hugged one another. Then Roth walked away, past the green fringes of the King's orchard toward the houses and marketplaces of the inner ring of the city. As Heriot watched him go, Cayley sprang up beside him.

“So he's not coming to the cottage,” Cayley said, adding, with a sudden change of tone, “Hey! Does he
know
?”

Heriot smiled. “Are you asking me if he knows you're a girl?”

“Did you tell?” Cayley asked.

Heriot shook his head. “Though I did tell him that you dreamed of being a warrior.”

“He'd have laughed at that one,” said Cayley, “him being a lord and me a street rat, like. But me—I'm going to be the warrior of warriors.”

“Dream away!” said Heriot derisively.

Cayley was jiggling from one foot to the other, still staring after Roth.

“Have you ever read him?” she asked curiously.

“I don't read friends,” Heriot replied severely. “You know that. He knows it too. Anyhow, I'm glad he's got business in the city.” He looked at her sideways. “I fancy going out to the edge tonight. Coming with me?”

Cayley looked into the orchard. The air was glowing with late sunlight. As the wind blew, shadows shifted under the trees, melting into one another, then drifting apart.

“Why?” she cried. “Why go there? Me—I struggled to get away from the edge. When you picked me up out of the gutter, back when I was small, and brought me back to life— that was wonderful luck for me. Look! It's safe here. It smells sweet. No one wants to hurt you. Why go off into dark places where every second man would kill you for your shoes alone? Because it's deadly to be an unarmed man with good shoes, walking in a place where most people go barefoot on mud and broken stones.”

Heriot smiled. “Something happened a little bit earlier . . . something that I don't understand,” he said. “I need to test myself against a bit of danger, and the easiest place to find danger is out on the edge.”

“Right, then! Who am I to argue?” said Cayley. “Walk on, Magician. I'll follow!”

3.

So they walked through the late afternoon, past houses, gardens, and marketplaces, then through the door in the wall around the city's heart to where crazy old buildings, erected during the childhood of the city, hunched together, leaning over the streets. Ragged people squinted at them through gathering twilight, sometimes shouting with a mixture of derision and anger, for Heriot and Cayley so obviously belonged to another place. “Like what you see?” one old woman yelled. The stink of the edge rose up around them, sifting into their hair and clothes.

“Everyone who lives here is a sort of warrior fighting doom,” Heriot said. “Not recognized, though!”

“I know it better than most people,” Cayley answered. “Coming here—it's like coming home to me.”

Evening deepened and darkened. Heriot and Cayley strode around the rare, reluctant flares lighted at street corners, then dove into the darkness that dominated streets mushy with mud and filth. Ancient doorways gaped at them; narrow chinks that served as windows stared down at them.

I'm being a fool, I know,
thought Heriot.
Winking at
Death for the second time today. Beckoning him on this time. But
he's playing hard to get.
He looked ahead, down an empty street, then flung his arms wide. “Hey, Death! Here I am!” he cried. “Give me a hug!”

And suddenly, as if Death were responding, there was movement in a narrow alley to their right—a quick padding sound as something came rushing toward them.

“Trouble!” yelled Cayley.

“I know,” Heriot replied.
Now! Now!
He desperately reached back into himself, feeling for that hidden connection, that source of the power he had drawn on so automatically earlier in the day. Yes! Ah, yes! Relief! So that was how! There! Power!
I have you. . . .

Suddenly men burst out of that black slot, while the buildings on either side leaned forward as if eager to inhale the scent of spilled blood. Two against five! He heard the metallic hiss as Cayley drew her sword from its sheath. A sword! What was a sword? He was the Magician of Hoad.
Now!
He felt rather than said the word (though his lips shaped it), sending it out like an arrow of power to strike and dissolve into the leaders.
Ignite!
he ordered silently, with an energy as immediate as thought. And even as, for the second time that day, a blade was raised to strike him, the lead assailant screamed and flung himself to the ground, rolling and lashing at his baggy clothes as they burst into active flame. The man beside him fell too. One of the remaining three shrank back, then tumbled forward onto his knees, crying out, but with dismay, not pain—beating at the flames with his bare hands, trying to help his friends. The other two men yelled and fled back into the alley.

“Put that silly sword away and walk,” Heriot said to Cayley. “Stroll on.” So they strolled on, away from the screaming and confusion, into the tangling embrace of the edge.
My
child!
the city seemed to say, devouring Heriot once more.
My
deathly child, more murderous than the murderers! The Hidden
Warrior! Yes!
What was the sword or the spear compared to a wish, a command, a single impulse with the substance of a weapon? Around a corner . . . around another corner . . . and he was released. The city's tormented arms suddenly flung themselves wide, as if the edge had become a street conjurer, gesturing in a moment of revelation:
See what I was holding,
hidden under my cloak! Your grove is waiting for you! Go home!
Heriot and Cayley had regained the wall that enclosed the noble heart of the inner city. The leaning buildings shrank back. Now, above the wall, Heriot and Cayley could make out the highest towers of the King's castle, distant but dominating the other buildings—opaque, flat black shapes against a clear, dark sky salted with stars. As they passed through the gate, Heriot showed his medallion of passage to the watchmen, but they knew him and merely nodded as he and Cayley went by. It was night in the heart of the city, just as it had been night at the edge, but here it was a safe darkness. Roads were clearly marked out with regular flares and torches—with moonlight too, for the moon was rising beyond the castle towers.

“How did you
do
that—what you did back there?” Cayley asked.

“I'm the Magician, remember?” Heriot said, somewhat boastfully. He felt he was entitled to boast. “It seems the world's elements are my well-trained dogs. Come when I whistle. Do what I tell them to.”

“I'm your dog,” Cayley said indignantly. “You should have turned me loose on them . . . me with my warrior sword. It would have been practice for me.”

“Forget that warrior business,” Heriot said. “Be what you really are and I'll look after you.”

“You tell me to forget it because I'm a girl. Which you didn't know, in spite of your powers! I had to tell you!” said Cayley.

“There have to be a few surprises in the world, even for magicians,” said Heriot. “And you're a friend, and I don't read friends.”

“You say you don't read friends, but I've felt you beat against me, every now and then, like a bee against glass,” said Cayley complacently. “Friend or not, I'm the one you can't read.”

“Oh well, that's true,” Heriot answered. “And it's true that at times I've been too curious about you to resist temptation. But you're more closed in than anyone I've ever met.”

Now he and Cayley were walking through open court-yards, past houses that stood apart from one another. The scent of gardens mixed with the city smells.

“Diamond!” Heriot spoke the name of the city aloud, and as his voice edged back into his ears, he heard not only defiance (for he did not want the city to consume him) but his fascination with the city as well.

“Diamond!” said the echo at his side. But Cayley was laughing, deriding the city, using laughter to ward off its power. She skipped ahead and spun like a dancer.

“Your war dance,” Heriot said. “But we have to be what we're born to be. You're a girl, and in the end men are just stronger. You might make a good defense with that sword of yours, but a strong man will still strike you down.”

“I work at keeping my arm strong,” Cayley protested. “Work at it! Work at it! Do chin-ups on branches. You! You think you'll gentle me down and make a woman of me, don't you? You think I'll wear skirts and have children.”

Heriot stared at her and shook his head. “I have considered the idea,” he admitted. “But so far, you and skirts and children—well, that idea just doesn't work. But the warrior idea doesn't work either. How can it?”

Cayley laughed. “Girl or not, I've got that warrior dance bred in my bones. Maybe I'll never be strong in the way of most heroes, but my arm can be strong
enough.
And in my head I'm nothing but strong.”

“Well,” said Heriot, “it doesn't matter right now what we are or what we might be. We'll slump down on the bench by the cabin, just being easy at last and listening to the wind in the trees. And then we'll go to our beds.”