Magic in Ithkar (9 page)

Tanu was stiff and angry; caught by the music, he couldn’t move or make a sound, but rage was pulsing through him. He understood as well as she that they were under attack. Jezeri could hear in her head, though not in her ears, the hissing whistle he’d made when he’d struck at the direwolf.

The music changed. It built a box about her that shifted her around and pushed against the stone. She stood with her back tight to the wall and saw for the first time the face of the shadow.

The odd man on the wharf. Old ’Un’s kind, she thought, and was surprised to find herself so unsurprised.

He lowered the flute.

She thrust her hand inside her tunic to quiet Tanu. “What do you want?” she said, remembering almost too late to speak gruffly, like the boy she was pretending to be.

He ran his thumb along the flute. It was bone white in the dusty shadow. Someone’s legbone, she thought. Gahh, how sickening. “Kneel, boy,” he said. His voice was so soft she had to strain to hear him. Boy, she thought. Good. That means he’s not as smart as he thinks he is.

She knelt, her mind going very calm, very clear; she knew exactly what she was going to do. On her knees, trying to look passive and frightened, she waited for him to make his next move, baiting her trap inside his, stalking her stalker. Artna guide me, she thought, make my throw straight.

The odd man reached inside his tunic and drew forth a black bag of some heavy material that hung in stiff folds when he held it out. “Put the beast in this,” he said, and threw it at her. And turned too quickly away, twisting his head to look over his shoulder at the dark bulk of the temple rising above the trees.

She fixed her eyes on the bag, struggled to suppress a grin when it fell short.

The odd man swung his head back around, started cursing. ’Tick it up, fool,” he snarled at her, his voice held to a whisper in spite of his anger. “Get a move on. Why does it have to be the village idiot!” Once again he looked over his shoulder. Jezeri began to worry a little herself. Stories she’d heard said that the priests of the temple could see anything, anywhere, any time they wanted. Aieea send they’re much too busy with the pilgrims, she thought. Now that it was a fight between her and the piper, she wanted no priests snooping into her business, especially if they’d take Tanu from her like the Old ’Un said.

Shifting clumsily on her knees, she moved forward, hesitated, disciplined a rush of excitement when he said nothing; pushing her luck as hard as she could, she lurched closer to him. Sweat popped out on her forehead, began to drip in her eyes. She wiped it away with her sleeve, chanced a quick look at him, saw she’d reduced the distance between them by nearly a third. It was enough. Maybe.

“Mind-lost idiot.” His whisper was harsh with urgency and menace. He brought the pipe to his lips, played a few notes that froze her and sent pain coursing through her. “Faster, or you’ll get more of that.”

She picked up the bag, more shaken than she cared to admit. The material was heavy, slick, like oiled silk but much thicker; she played with it a few moments to flex her fingers and calm her tightening nerves, then began to uncurl Tanu’s tail from about her neck. “Be ready,” she whispered to him as she eased him from the pocket and set him on the ground beside her knee. The piper stared at him, breath hissing between his lips, his eyes wet with greed and fear.

Fumbling at the bag to cover her movements, she slid the knife from her boot, slipped off the sheath, held the knife with the blade pressed back against her arm as she worked the mouth of the bag open. The piper shifted impatiently, looked away, back along the wall.

Jezeri scooped up Tanu and flung him at the piper, felt the powerful thrust of his hind legs as he kicked against her hand, then launched herself in a low dive at the piper’s legs, knife flipping over to slash at his hamstrings.

Warned by weasel-instinct, he sprang aside—but not quickly enough or far enough; she missed the hamstring but scored him deeply on the calf as she brushed by him.

She landed heavily, awkwardly, all her weight coming down hard on her shoulder, her head slamming against the earth, the knife knocked out of her hand, the wind knocked out of her body. Behind her she heard a scrabbling on the ground, a bubbling scream that broke off suddenly, then nothing.

For what seemed an eternity she couldn’t move, could only lay gasping, but finally she rolled over and came up onto her feet, looked around for the piper.

He lay in a contorted heap, as dead as that long-ago direwolf.

Crooning his bliss, Tanu perched on the dead man’s hip, preening the fur on his hind legs, obviously very pleased with himself.

Rubbing at her shoulder, Jezeri stood gazing down at the odd man. I never got a chance to ask you where you came from, she thought. I don’t even know your name. Artna rot you, you cheated me. You’re dead. You made me kill you, and there’s no asking you anything anymore. She shuddered, swallowed several times as sour fluid flooded her mouth. “What do I do now? Aieea help me.” Sick and more than a little afraid, she glanced fearfully at the temple, wondering how much longer she had before everything fell on her, shivered as she remembered how the piper kept doing that. She wanted her mother, her father, Old ’Un, even her idiot brothers, Aunt Jesset, her father’s sister—and even awful Uncle Herveh, who’d somehow managed to marry her mother’s sister. She wanted to feel safe and ordinary again, wanted someone, anyone, to take this burden off her shoulders.

But there was no one. Only Tanu and the wind and the trees. And the dead man, who still threatened her even though he was so very dead. “I killed him,” she said aloud, and was startled to hear herself say the words so calmly. She tried over in her mouth one of the spitting curses the piper had flung at her and felt an intense satisfaction at the sound of it, though she had no idea what it meant. “Probably something obscene,” she told Tanu. “Haschundapri!” she repeated, liking the way it let her explode out her woes. She said it a third time as she looked around for somewhere to put the odd man’s body. If the priests found it ... she didn’t know what they’d do to her, but it’d sure mess up her family. She ran along the wall, turned the corner, and headed toward the canal, keeping the wharf sheds between her and the docks, stopped on the bank of the canal, looked both ways along it. Most of the pilgrims were up closer to the temple and the sheds blocked the view of anyone on the docks. The water slid past, dark and secret, moonlight scrolling silver lines on the shifting black surface, the muted whisper of the water lost to the wind that teased at her hair. “Mama says all the time pick up after yourself, Jezeri, don’t leave your stuff lying around.” She giggled, bit her lip, dragged her sleeve across her face. After a last glance along the canal, she raced back down the weed-choked alley, rounded the corner of the warehouse, and stopped beside the piper’s body.

“Pick up, pick up,” she breathed, began giggling again in tiny gasping bursts as she bent and grabbed hold of the man’s collar, hoping he’d been practical enough to buy good strong cloth. Her stomach lurched, but she got command of herself and started dragging the body toward the canal.

Like Jet and Nightlord hauling an extra-heavy load in the wagon-draw, she dug in her heels and heaved the awkward weight along, inch by inch at first, then faster as she built up momentum. Fighting waves of dizziness and the pain in her shoulders, sweat on her forehead again, trickling into her eyes again, she pulled the body over the crackling weeds, the dry withered grass, the sounds thundering in her ears with the groaning of her breath. With a last explosion of effort, she got him lodged at the top of the bank. She straightened, stood rubbing at her back, her arms and legs as limp as old leather rope.

A rustling in the grass behind her. She swung around, frightened, but it was only Tanu bringing her the knife and sheath. She sheathed the knife and stuffed it back in her boot. “Thanks, little friend. Just a bit more and we head for camp.” Tanu sang of pleasure and patience and went trotting off again. Jezeri pushed the damp hair off her face and nudged the piper’s body with her toe. Its eyes were half-open, the whites glistening in the moonlight like wet mother-of-pearl. At first she didn’t think she could touch it again. She closed her hands tightly, so tightly her fingernails bit crescents into her palms. What I have to do, I can do, she told herself and fought to make herself believe it. Trying not to think about what she was doing, she wound her fingers in the fine black hair and heaved.

For an instant the dead man resisted her, then, with a sickening sucking sound, he came loose and rolled over into the water, pulling with him a rattle of loose gravel and clods of dirt. The current teased at him, dragged him away from the side, drew him downstream, his body gathering speed as it sank below the surface. The last she saw of him was a flapping white hand.

Gulping, gasping, she collapsed on hands and knees and spewed out everything in her stomach. When the spasms were finished, she crawled away from the edge, tore up handfuls of dry grass, and scrubbed at her face, wiped her hands hard across the clumps of grass. Wearily she got to her feet, drew her sleeve one more time across her face, feeling empty but somehow cleaner, as if the canal had taken him and hidden him but cleaned his traces off her. “Tanu?”

He came lolloping from the alley, sat on his haunches, and held up to her the odd man’s bone flute. She took it from him and thought of tossing it into the water to follow its master, then she changed her mind and stuffed it into her money pocket, pulling her tunic over the part that stuck out.

She looked for the moon. “Haschundapri!” she breathed.

It hardly seemed to have moved since the last time she’d looked, sometime around the middle of the chase. She thrust her hand up—yes, more than a handspan gap between the moon’s front edge and the first stars of the Pard’s paws. “What do you know!” she said, wonder in her voice. A shred of cloud blew across the moon. She dropped her hand and watched it and others like it scud along. The wind was getting stronger, with a damp bite to it that hinted of rain before morning. A good thing that would be, she thought, frowning at the drag furrows the body had dug in the dirt and weeds. She kicked at the ground, sending a spray of soil into one furrow, shook her head. Enough is enough. “Let’s get out of here.” She clucked to Tanu, grunted as he leaped into her arms, settled him in the pocket. “Old ’Un’s got some explaining to do,” she said. Tanu didn’t bother answering; he was curled up, more than half-asleep. She ran nervous fingers through her tangled hair, smiled ruefully as she thought of the scolding Mama was going to give her for making such a mess out of herself. With Tanu murmuring sleepily against her chest, she edged around the end of the shed and started back along the wharves toward the livestock sheds and the place where her family was camped.

Born a fletcher, I. Born light-boned and long-muscled into a tribe of knotty, barrel-chested smiths and squat, sinewy miners, I had no choice but to learn the less strenuous art of fitting feather to shaft in order to support myself.

My people lived in the cold and arid mountains far above the Galzar Pass, wresting a precarious living from holes they gouged into the earth and raw materials they shaped into the weapons men always seem to require. Ours was a homeland of blowing granular ice and icy granular wind, and my people had long been numbed into bitter subsistence and nothing more.

But they were not really my people. Even as a small child I suspected it. My place was not among head-bowed, back-bent folk who groveled in front of traders and snarled at one another over a few coins.

Does every child think he has been raised by the wrong parents, shipwrecked among strangers? Or perhaps not born at all, for the old women told no tales of my mother’s labor and never spoke of Weenarin as having been a red and mewling infant. So ... into this place by another route I had come. But from where? And how could I find my way back?

Then one season, just as my first beard started to itch, a trader told me the city people’s legend of the Three Lordly Ones who had descended to earth in a silver dwelling from the stars and been hailed as gods. Good and kindly gods, incredibly clever and capable of stunning feats of magic.

Light-boned and long-muscled, that was how the trader described the Three Lordly Ones. And when his words touched my ears I knew at last who I was. Whose foundling.

The Three had landed at Ithkar and subsequently vanished from there, leaving a riot of legends behind to be celebrated each year at the great fair which had sprung up around the earth scorched by their appearance. And in my heart I knew they had left one of their own behind them, a descendant born but for some reason unclaimed—stolen, perhaps. Lost in some tragic way before they returned to their starhome. Yet surely the Three knew of that child’s existence and were watching for him with the infinite wisdom of gods.

Must get to the place where they had last been. Must find a way to signal to them, to summon them back for me!

Kept this knowledge to myself, I did, because the others would tease me cruelly if I whispered a word of it. But from that day I planned to go to Ithkar, and when my chance came I took it gladly.

The year had been harder than usual, and traders scarce. There began to be talk of sending some of our wares to the great fair, for we had need of many things. Stout leather for boots and potions for sickness—and even I needed a replacement for the piece of glass I screwed in my eye to allow me to study the exact angle and set of feathers as I affixed them to the arrow shaft, for the one I had inherited from my predecessor was cracked. It is no easy thing to be a good fletcher and give an arrow wings.

Begged to be allowed to go to Ithkar, I did. No one else volunteered. No one else was anxious to be scorned and spat upon as mountain folk were in the lowlands. He who called himself my father scowled at me from under the thorny overhang of his eyebrows. “For what purpose you, Weenarin? Ithkar is far away and the journey is dangerous. Smarter men shrink from it, stronger men than you.”