The Thief (6 page)
Authors: Megan Whalen Turner
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #General, #Fantasy & Magic, #Legends; Myths; Fables
“Oh?”
“You know what I mean, Pol. If he finds out I want to stay, he’ll take me away.”
“And do you want to stay?”
“Yes,” said Sophos quite firmly. “I like learning, and the magus isn’t as frightening as I thought at first.”
“No? Shall I tell him you said so?”
“Don’t you dare. And don’t tell my father either. You know my father is hoping he’ll toughen me up. Don’t you think the magus is nicer than he seems at first?”
“I couldn’t say,” said Pol.
“Well, he isn’t nearly as hard on me as he is on Ambiades.”
“Leaves that to Ambiades, I notice,” said Pol.
“Oh, I don’t mind, Pol. I like Ambiades. He’s smart, and he’s not usually so…so—”
“High-handed?” Pol supplied the word.
“Temperamental,” said Sophos. “I think something is bothering him.” He changed the subject. “Do you know where we’re going?”
I pricked up my ears.
“Attolia,” said Pol, which was nothing more than the obvious at that point.
“Is that all you know? Then why are you here?”
“Your father sent me to keep an eye on you. Toughen you up.”
Sophos laughed. “No, really, why?”
“Just what I said.”
“I’ll bet the magus needed someone reliable, and Father said he couldn’t have you without me.”
I bet he was right.
We came to a steep place and had to scramble. Once we’d worked our way down, Pol dropped behind Sophos, effectively ending their conversation. Sophos moved up beside me.
“Are you really named after the god of thieves?” “I am.”
“Well, how could they tell what you were going to be when you were just a baby?”
“How did they know what you were going to be when you were a baby?”
“My father was a duke.”
“So my mother was a thief.”
“So you would have to grow up to be one, too?”
“Most of the people in my family thought so. My father wanted me to be a soldier, but he’s been disappointed.”
Behind us I heard Pol grunt. He no doubt thought my father’s disappointment was justified.
“Your father? He did?”
Sophos sounded so surprised that I looked over at him and asked, “Why shouldn’t he?”
“Oh, well, I mean…” Sophos turned red, and I wondered about the circulation of his blood; maybe his body kept an extra supply of it in his head, ready for blushing.
“What surprises you?” I asked. “That my father was a soldier? Or that I knew him? Did you think that I was illegitimate?”
Sophos opened and closed his mouth without saying anything.
I told him that no, I wasn’t illegitimate. “I even have brothers and sisters,” I told him, “with the same father.” Poor Sophos looked as if he wanted the ground to swallow him.
“What do they do?” he finally asked.
“Well, one of my brothers is a soldier, and the other brother is a watchmaker.”
“Really? Can he make those new watches that are flat instead of round in the back?” He seemed interested, and I was going to tell him that Stenides had made his first flat watch about two years ago, but the magus noticed Sophos talking to me and called him away.
As Sophos pulled ahead, I said loudly, “My sisters are even married, and honest housewives to boot.” At least they were mostly honest.
The valley eroded by the spring never deepened enough to be called a gorge. Its sides curved gently away from us, and only in a few places was the going stony. As we descended, we could see Attolia stretched out ahead of us, and to the right the sea. Dotted across the horizon, islands continued the mountain range behind us. On the far side of the Attolian valley was another mountain range, and out of that came the
Seperchia River. It wandered along the plain, sometimes nearer to the Hephestial Mountains, sometimes many miles away. Just before it reached the coast, it bumped against a rocky spur of the foothills and was diverted into the Hephestial range itself. There the mountains were soft limestone, and the river had cut a pass down to Sounis to flow past the king’s city and finally into the middle sea.
“It’s much greener than home, isn’t it?” Sophos commented to no one in particular.
He was quite right. Where the view of Sounis had been brown and baked gold, this country was shades of green. Even the olive trees, planted below us, were a richer color than the silver gray trees on the other side of the range.
“They get the easterly winds that dump their rain when they hit the mountains,” the magus explained. “Attolia gets nearly twice as much rain every year as we do.”
“They export wine, figs, olives, and grapes as well as cereals. They have pastureland to support their own cattle, and they don’t import sheep from Eddis,” Ambiades said knowledgeably, and the magus laughed.
“Gods, you were paying attention!”
I thought at first that Ambiades was going to smile, but he scowled instead and didn’t speak until we stopped for the night, and then it was only to berate Sophos. It was strange behavior for someone who had
been so contented by the fire the night before. I couldn’t see why Sophos liked him, but it was obvious that he did. Worshiped might be a better word. All he needed to do was build a miniature temple and get Ambiades to stand on the altar.
I guessed that Ambiades was usually more pleasant company. The magus didn’t seem likely to tolerate prolonged sullenness in an apprentice, and it seemed to me that he thought highly of Ambiades even if he did call him a fool from time to time.
After dinner Sophos asked if there were other stories about the gods, and the magus began the story of Eugenides and the Sky God’s Thunderbolts but stopped almost immediately.
“He’s your patron god,” he said to me. “Why don’t you tell Sophos who he is?”
I don’t know what he expected me to say, but I told the entire story as I had learned it from my mother, and he didn’t interrupt.
T
HE
B
IRTH OF
E
UGENIDES,
G
OD OF
T
HIEVES
It had been many years since the creation of man, and he had multiplied across the land. One day as Earth walked through her forests, she met a woodcutter. His axe lay beside him on the ground, and he wept.
“Why weep, woodcutter?” Earth asked him. “I see no hurt.”
“Oh, Lady,” said the woodcutter, “my hurt is overwhelming because it is someone else’s pain that makes me cry.”
“What pain?” asked Earth, and the woodcutter explained that he and his wife wished to have children, but they had none, and this made his wife so sad that she sat in her house and wept. And the woodcutter, when he thought of his wife’s tears, wept, too.
Earth brushed the tears from his cheeks and told him to meet her again in the forest in nine days, and in that time she would bring him a son.
The woodcutter went home and told his wife what had happened, and in nine days he went again into the forest to meet the goddess there. She asked, “Where is your wife?”
The woodcutter explained that she hadn’t come. It is one thing to meet the Goddess in the forest and another thing to convince your wife that you have done so. His wife thought her husband had lost his mind, and she wept all the more.
“Go,” said Earth, “and tell your wife to come tomorrow, or she will have no child and no husband and no home either when the day is done.”
So the woodcutter went home to his wife and pleaded with her to come to the forest, and to please him, she agreed. So the next day she was with her
husband, and Earth asked her, “Have you a cradle?”
And the woman said no. It is one thing to humor your husband, who has suddenly gone crazy, but it is something else to let all the neighbors know that he is crazy by asking to borrow a cradle for a baby he says that you are going to get from the Goddess.
“Go,” said Earth, “and get a cradle and small clothes and blankets, or you will have no child and no husband and no home by this time tomorrow.”
So the woodcutter and his wife went to their neighbors, and the neighbors were good people. They gave to the woodcutter and his wife the things they said they needed, and they asked no questions because it was perfectly clear to them that their neighbors had lost their wits.
The next day in the forest when Earth asked, “Have you a cradle?” the woodcutter and his wife said, “Yes.”
“Have you small clothing?”
They said, “Yes.”
“And blankets? And all the things you will need for a baby?” and they said yes, and Earth showed them the baby in her arms. And the woodcutter’s wife came close to her, and she said, “Have you a name for him?”
And the Earth had no name. The gods know themselves and have no need of names. It is man who names all things, even gods.
“Then we will call him Eugenides,” said the woodcutter’s wife, “the wellborn.”
They took Eugenides to their home, and he was their own son. The Earth sometimes came in the guise of an old woman and brought him presents. When he was very little, the presents were little, a top that spun in different colors, soap bubbles that hung over his cradle, a blanket of fine moleskin to keep him warm in the winter. When he was five, she brought him the gift of languages that he might understand the animals all around him. When he was ten, she brought him the gift of summoning that he might converse with the lesser gods of streams and lakes.
When Eugenides was fifteen and Earth would have given him immortality, the Sky stopped her on her way.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To see my son,” said Earth.
“What son have you but mine?” said the Sky.
“I have my own son and the woodcutter’s,” said Earth, and the Sky was angry. He went to the home of Eugenides and he threw down thunderbolts and the house was destroyed and Eugenides and his parents ran frightened into the forest. The Sky looked for them there, but the forest was Earth’s and in Earth’s name hid them.
The Sky grew still more angry and shouted at the
Earth, “You shall have no sons but my sons! You shall have no people but my people!” And he threw down his thunderbolts on the villages where the people thanked the Earth for her gifts, but he spared the villages where the people thanked him for their creation.
And the Earth grew angry also and she said she would have none of his people and she shook with her anger and she destroyed the villages that the Sky God had spared. All over the world the villages of the Earth’s people and the Sky’s people were destroyed and the crops burnt in the fields and the animals lost and the people were afraid and prayed for rescue, but Earth and the Sky were too angry to hear them.
All the people in the world might have died then, but Hephestia heard their cries. She was the oldest child of the Earth and the Sky and closest to them in power. She went to each and spoke to them and said, “Why should the Earth not have what children she pleases? Look at the children you have had.” And the Sky remembered his children who were streams and rivers and saw that they were choked with refuse of the burning caused by his thunderbolts.
Hephestia went to Earth and said, “Why should you not have the people of the Sky? Look what people you have for your own.” And Earth looked and
she saw her people afraid, without homes or food, their houses destroyed and all their livelihoods gone. The Sky’s people were frightened, too, and they begged her to put away her anger and forgive them if they had offended her. And Earth did put away her anger, and the Sky did put away his anger as well.
Hephestia asked them, “Why should they suffer because you are angry with each other? Give me your thunderbolts, Father, and give up to me your power to shake the ground, Mother, so that they will not suffer again from your anger with each other.”
Earth gave Hephestia her power to shake the ground, and the Sky promised to give her his thunderbolts. He promised also not to harm Eugenides, but he said the Earth must not give him any more presents and never give immortality to any children but his children. Earth promised, and she and the Sky were at peace.
The people of the Sky and the Earth rebuilt their homes and recovered their animals and replanted their fields, but from then on they were careful to build two altars in every village to thank the Sky for their creation and the Earth for her gifts, that they would always be the people of them both. And in times of great need they pray not only to the Earth and the Sky but to Hephestia as well that she will intercede on their behalf with her parents.
“You sound very different when you are telling a story,” said Sophos.
“That,” I said acidly, “is the way my mother told it to me.”
“I liked it.”
“Well, it is the only one you will hear tonight,” said the magus. “Eugenides and the Sky God will have to wait for tomorrow.” To me he said, “Your mother seems to have taken the story and made it her own.”
“Of course,” jeered Ambiades. “She was a thief.”
That night I slept lightly for the first time since being in prison. I woke as the moon, half full, shone on the hillside. I rolled over to look at what stars I could see and noticed Ambiades, sitting up in his blankets.
“What are you doing awake?” I asked him.
“Keeping an eye on you.”
I looked at the other three sleeping bodies. “You take turns?” Ambiades nodded.
“Since when?”
“Since the last inn.”
“Really? And I’ve been too tired to appreciate it until now.” I shook my head with regret and went back to sleep.
I
N THE MORNING WE ATE
the last of the food and drank the last of the water that the others had carried in leather sacks over the mountain. The bread was stale and rock hard, and I wasn’t the only one who was hungry when we were through. The magus saw me looking in distaste at the lump of bread in my hand, and he laughed. He was in a cheery mood and seemed willing to set aside our differences since he’d put me thoroughly in my place.
“I know,” he said. “Don’t bother to complain. I’ll get you fresh bread for lunch, I promise.”
“How long until lunch?”
He turned to look at the trail ahead of us. It dropped steeply and gave us a view of the valley ahead of us. It was a more limited view than the one we had had higher up the mountain. The river had disappeared. So had the sea. “Can you see that break in the olives?” the magus asked. I looked where he pointed and saw the rooftops
of a few houses, only three or four miles away. “We’ll get our lunch from there.”
“Then I will leave the rest of my breakfast for the birds.” I pitched the bread over the rocks around our campsite. Everyone but Pol did the same. As a soldier he had probably eaten worse things.
Soon we were once again in the open. The shallow groove carved by the stream ended at the top of a cliff that was the precipitous edge of the mountain. Sixty feet below whispered waves of olives. Between the cliff and the trees, like the foam left by breaking waves, were jumbled rocks of all sizes. To my left and to my right, the cliff, the trees, and the swirling rocks continued as far as I could see. Ahead, the olives rolled out for miles, rising a little but mostly falling away toward the hidden river, their silver surface broken by islands of shiny green, which were the dry oaks, and by lightning catchers that were lone cypress trees standing like swords on their hilts. The rooftops of the town that the magus had pointed out earlier were the only man-made things to break the surface of the trees.
“It’s like a sea,” Sophos said, echoing my thoughts.
“It is a sea,” said the magus quietly. “It’s called the Sea of Olives. It was planted to honor one of the old gods so long ago that no one knows which one. The trees stretch from the coast all the way to the edge of the dystopia, about thirty-five miles inland.”
Ambiades was interested in more practical knowledge. “How do we get down?”
I looked around for the goat path that I knew must be around, and I whistled when I found it. “Glad we had a good night’s rest,” I said. “Everybody did get plenty of sleep, didn’t they?” Nobody mentioned standing a three-hour watch.
“Well, dithering won’t help,” I said.
The path began in a crevasse left behind when a large rock had broken loose from the bluff and dropped to the ground below. There was a shelf about eight feet below the top of the cliff. I flexed my knees and jumped before the magus could stop me. Pol jumped after me and landed so close that he nearly knocked both of us down the slope. I steadied him and called up to Sophos.
“Come on, you’re next. Lie down and slide your legs over the lip.” Pol and I grabbed him by the legs and lowered him. Once he was down with us, the hollow was filled with bodies. I started the next phase of the descent and left Pol to help the magus and Ambiades.
There was no loose rubble to kick down, or I wouldn’t have gone first, but I did worry that one of the others was going to slide down on my head. I went as fast as I safely could.
The path switched back and forth across the cliff, turning every ten feet or so and dropping five feet with each turn. It was only about six inches wide, less in spots, and was more a groove carved into the stone cliff
than anything else. There were two bits so steep that I sat down and slithered, grabbing a passing plant to slow down. As I went down, I muttered under my breath, mimicking the magus’s voice. “‘ This trail isn’t used much,’ he says. ‘There are better ones.’ I’ll bet there are,” I said, and swore out loud as my foot slipped. I recovered my balance easily but banged my wrist against an outcropping and swore again.
I sucked on the sore spot as I skittered down the last part of the path and picked my way through the rubble at the bottom. The boulders there were huge, higher than my head, and rested on mounds of smaller rocks that they had dragged down with them when they pulled loose from the cliff face. Once I reached the open space beyond the rocks, I waited for the others. They were slow.
All four of them crabbed along the cliff, holding on with both hands. Even nearly empty, the packs they carried threatened to overbalance everyone but Pol. He and the magus kept stopping to look over their shoulders at me. I looked over my own shoulder and almost went to sit in the shade of the olive trees, but the magus had been more civil than usual, and I wanted to keep him in a good mood. So I waited in the sunlight where he could see me. It was a hot day already, and the sweat trickled down the side of my face.
When everyone else had made it safely down, we moved into the shade and sat down to rest. It was dark
under the olives, and cool. The trees were so old and twisted and their leaves grew so thickly that they allowed very little light to reach the ground. Instead of juniper and sage growing underneath them, there was almost nothing, some thin grass, a very few spindly bushes.
“I am going to walk into town to buy horses and lunch,” said the magus as he stood up and dusted himself off. “It will take me almost an hour to walk there and back, in addition to the time it takes to buy the horses and provisions. We’re still a day behind schedule, so we’ll have to eat while we go.” He disappeared between the olive trees.
Pol turned where he sat and opened the pack he’d been leaning against. “No need to waste the time we have,” he said, and pulled two wooden swords out of the pockets sewn to the outside. He handed one to Sophos and one to Ambiades, and they began their fencing lesson. I remembered the scene that I had watched from the window of the mountain hut, and I supposed that it had not been a dream after all.
“Swords up,” said Pol, and they began drills with which they were obviously familiar. Once they had bent and twisted for a while and their muscles were prepared, Pol matched Ambiades and Sophos against each other. They sparred carefully, and I watched with interest. Ambiades was by far the better swordsman, but then he was four or five years older. Sophos was just
learning the motions, but he showed some talent and coordination. With a good instructor, he’d be a dangerous opponent. For now he was too short and too unfamiliar with his weapon to do anything except wave it around and hope it connected. At critical moments he occasionally closed his eyes. When Ambiades leaned in over his guard and whacked him on the head, I winced.
“Are you all right?” Ambiades dropped his sword, looking concerned. “I thought that you would block that.” He put his hand up to rub Sophos’s head, but Pol pushed him back.
“He should have. Try it again.” He made Ambiades repeat the move over and over until Sophos worked out for himself a block that would come naturally. Sophos got banged twice more on the head, although Ambiades only hit him lightly. He apologized each time, and I began to think that under the pride and prickles there might be a reason to like him. Finally, when Ambiades rode over the top of Sophos’s guard for the seventh or eighth time, Sophos stepped to one side and blocked the attack from there.
“Good enough,” said Pol, high praise indeed, and ended the lesson. Sophos and Ambiades threw themselves down in the grass, panting while Pol put their wooden swords away. I checked to see that there were pockets sewn to each of their packs, and the magus’s as well. It explained why they hadn’t taken the packs off and tossed them down the cliff before climbing down
themselves. Nobody wants his valuable short sword dropped onto a pile of rocks. I was reassured to know that we hadn’t come into the wilderness armed only with Pol’s sword, but I wondered what the Uselesses, elder and younger, would do with theirs if we ever got into a fight. I also wondered if hidden in Pol’s pack or the magus’s was a gun. Acting on the king’s business, they were entitled to carry one, at least in Sounis. Guns weren’t as accurate as crossbows, but they were less awkward to transport, and to have one would have been a comfort.
When the swords were back in their packs, Pol settled down on the grass himself and looked expectantly at Sophos.
“Don’t match your weakness against your opponent’s strength?” Sophos said hesitantly.
“And your weakness is?”
“My height?”
“And Ambiades’s strength is?”
“Years of fencing lessons,” I said under my breath, but no one heard me.
Sophos gave the correct answer. “His height.”
“Remember that.”
Then he praised Ambiades mildly and offered him a few tips. He and Ambiades talked like men for a few minutes about sword fighting. Pol clearly respected the things Ambiades had to say, and Ambiades looked pleased and content. I almost liked him myself.
We still had time to wait for the magus, so I lay down on the soft dirt under an olive tree and closed my eyes. When the magus arrived, we were all, except Pol, sleeping. I woke when I heard the horses thumping toward us but didn’t move. It was pleasant to lie and look up at the twisted branches and tightly packed leaves of the olive trees. The dirt under my fingertips was powder soft. There was a breeze that moved the smallest branches, and the tiny bits of sky that showed through were white in the midday heat. Flies buzzed around my head. The only other sound was that of the horses’ hooves getting closer. It didn’t occur to me until the last minute that it might be a stranger and not the magus at all. I nearly jumped out of my skin, but there had been no need to worry.
“Glad to see someone is alert, if a little bit late,” said the magus as he walked between the trees. Ambiades and Sophos scrambled up and took the horses, while the magus talked to Pol.
“I think we’ll ride down to the road and follow it. We won’t reach Profactia until nightfall, and we can cut around it through the trees. There’s a moon tonight, and we should be able to stay on the road until quite late. We’ll make up some of the time we’ve lost.”
Pol nodded and got up. He helped the Uselesses pack the provisions the magus had brought into the saddlebags. Then we all mounted up and rode slowly between the trees while we ate fresh bread and cheese
and more olives. We kept having to lean close to our horses’ necks as they walked under branches without caring whether their riders would fit under the branches as well. Donkeys would not have been so tedious. Donkeys, however, would have been left behind once we reached the road.
We moved quickly. I was still hungry but quit eating. It was too much bother to go on holding the horse with one hand while eating with the other. With Pol on one side of me and Ambiades on the other, I bounced up the road until I got used to the feeling. The magus had cautioned Ambiades and Sophos to keep their mouths shut when we were within earshot of other travelers, as their accents would mark them as members of Sounis’s upper class.
“You don’t need to worry, Gen,” he said to me, teasing again.
“Really?”
“Attolian gutter is indistinguishable from Sounisian gutter,” he said, and I laughed with the others. I was very content with my slang and my half-swallowed words.
When we were alone on the road, walking the horses for a while to rest them, Sophos asked what would happen if anyone guessed we were not from Attolia.
“Nothing.” The magus shrugged. “Traders still do business here. Trade would go on right up until there was open war; it might not stop even then.”
“And if they knew
why
we were here?” I asked.
The magus gave me a sharp look before he answered, “They’d probably arrest us and turn us over to their queen.” I gathered that he wanted to leave the rest unsaid.
“And she would?” I prompted anyway.
“Behead us all. Publicly.”
I shivered and rubbed the back of my neck with one hand. Ambiades looked positively green. He was touchy and unpleasant the rest of the day.
It was twilight and traffic was increasing when we approached Profactia. We dawdled until there was no one in sight on the road and then disappeared into the olive groves, where we waited again until Pol and the magus agreed that all of the olive harvesters would have left the trees for the night. We rode quietly through the trees and saw nothing of the town. I was a little disappointed. We returned to the road without being seen. The moon was up. The night air was cool, and we’d pulled our cloaks out of the saddlebags. We stayed close to the trees like robbers and went on until I was almost worn out. Just as the moon was setting, the magus finally turned his horse into the trees to look for a camping site. We ate our dinner cold and slept without a fire.
Pol woke us before dawn, and the magus led us deeper among the trees, following the guidance of his compass in its brown leather case. After an hour or so,
when the sun was beginning to be warm, we stopped for breakfast in a tiny open space where several olive trees had died and not been replaced. Breakfast was just bread and more cheese, but Pol boiled water over a tiny fire and made coffee that was thick with sugar. “That will wake us up,” he said.
There was a small spring nearby, and the magus suggested we have a wash before we packed up. Sophos, the magus, and Pol shucked their clothes and splashed ankle deep into the chilly water. After a few hesitations I joined them. I didn’t want them to think I liked being clean, but the cool water was refreshing. Only Ambiades remained on the bank, still wrapped in his cloak while his small cup of coffee cooled in front of him. He’d been quiet all morning and, I realized, quiet the evening before—no taunts for me and no gibes for Sophos. He wasn’t thinking about a bath in the spring, and I was wondering what unpleasant thoughts were on his mind when he jumped like a startled cat. The magus had flicked cold water on him.
“Come wash,” the magus said, and Ambiades stood up and dropped his cloak beside the others on the stream bank. It lay next to Sophos’s and made a very poor showing. The other cloaks were well made but ordinary. Mine was probably one of the magus’s old ones cut down, and Pol’s was a plain military cloak, but Sophos’s was a particularly fine specimen, made of expensive fabric generously cut with a stylish silk tassel
hanging from the hem at the back. Beside it, the narrow cut of Ambiades’s cloak was flashy but out of fashion, and there was a line of holes, poorly darned, that ran from neck to hem, where a moth had been eating it during its summer storage.