Compleat Traveller in Black (29 page)

Roiga accepted it and listened to its cry. She said as she cast it contemptuously to the floor, “Hah! Yes, indeed, it does cry out – by forcing air through twin taut reeds! And do you know what it says? It says, The man who bought me is a fool!’ Now get you gone!”

“Will they never learn?” murmured the Lady Scail as this man also was frog-marched away. She had taken a tiny pad of emery and was buffing her nails, that were painted the same color as her gown. “Who remains – anyone?”

And there was a girl.

Suddenly the mild air stung their skins to rawness, like an infinity of tiny insects. Scail laid by her emery-pad, Roiga closed her thin old hands for reassurance on the table’s solid edge, and Runch confirmed his balance on his stool. The newcomer stood before them in a broad hat and fur breeches and a black mail shirt that hung down to midthigh. For a long while there was utter silence.

Then, at length, she laid on the table a small packet wrapped in parchment and bound with a white ribbon. She said, “Spice.”

The three counsellors inhaled as one, and it was Roiga who eventually said, “Vantcheen?”

“The best,” said the girl. She was very thin, as though a skeleton had been dressed again in its skin without the underlying fat and muscle, and her eyes burned like a black fire.

“Then name your price!” cried Runch.

“Ah, yes. A price.” The girl tapped one sharp front tooth with a nail even sharper. “Silver, then. Three ounces’ weight. Cast in the shape of a hammerhead.”

The three counsellors tensed. Lady Scail said, “As to the shaft –?”

The girl shook her head ever so slightly, and gave ever so slight a smile. She said, “I thank you for the offer, though I suspect your male companion might not” – at which Runch blanched and almost tumbled from his high stool. “But the shaft has already been – ah – ceded to me.”

“Oh, but you’re so young!” Roiga exclaimed. “And yet so skilled!”

“For that I would not claim the credit,” the girl murmured, and turned to leave.

“Wait!” cried Lady Scail. “Do you not wish converse with my brother? It’s long since one was here who proved so adept!”

“If the constellations are proper for our encounter, I shall meet the thegn,” the girl replied composedly, and took from the attendant scribe a draft to cover her pay, authorizing the mansion’s master smith to forge the silver hammerhead.

There was a deep silence for some while following her departure. The handle of that hammer was of a discomfortable nature; it
had
to be gristly, and some, particularly men, would call it grisly.

But to have purchased the best-quality vantcheen, and parted with mere silver in exchange …!

Thus they were poised, very well pleased, to adjourn for the day, the only other supplicants for audience being of the common run – disputants over boundary fences, or prospective parents-in-law come to determine the proper size of a marriage portion – when there was a furious stamping and considerable shouting beyond the door, and at the head of a gaggle of stewards, secretaries and waiting-maids their master himself came blasting into the room.

Rising to their feet, the three counsellors beheld with amazement his expression of blind rage.

“I have been cheated and deceived!” roared Garch.

By ordinary he was pretty much a fop, this lord of improbably rich estates, but now his long brown hair and beard were tousled, the laces hung down from his dark red shirt, and his fine worsted stockings slopped over the tops of his boots. To emphasize his outburst, he hammered on the table, and came near to scattering the spice.

“Search me this mansion, every nook and cranny!” he shouted. “Moreover, all the lands about! And if it be not found within the hour, send to the deceiver Buldebrime and drag him here!”

“If
what
be not found?” countered Scail, who as his sister might most freely of the three ask that simple necessary question without inflaming him to further rage.

Garch mastered himself with vast effort, drew close, and whispered in her ear. By watching the change in her face, base attendants from whom he meant to keep the detailed truth deduced at once it was a matter of grave import. Some among the best-informed put two and two together, and when a moment later they received their orders – from Scail – to bring hither all the lamps and candles that could be found, concluded it would be politic to leave in search of service with some other lord. It was, after all, a mere day and a half short of the full moon.

And many would have done so right away, had it not been for the dense dark outside … and, maybe, the unexpected smile that spread over Garch’s face when his sister pressed the new-bought spice into his hand.

By contrast with the thegn, Master Buldebrime was in a high good humor. Walking through the back rooms of his home, that served as shop, factory and warehouse, with his own personal bright-shining lamp in hand, he no more than cuffed any of his apprentices tonight, not once employing the tawse that hung at his belt.

“Here are eleven candles almost the weight of twelve!” he barked at one child, charged with bearing finished work from the ranked pottery molds to be checked on the steelyard – but even she and the boy who had overfilled the molds escaped with mere openhanded slaps. Satisfied that they were dutifully trimming the surplus wax to be re-melted, he continued.

“Not so lavish with that essence!” he growled at a boy engaged in adding perfumes, drop by drop, to a mix of oils for the most expensive lamps. “Don’t you know it comes from Alpraphand? Hah! I’ve half a mind to make you walk such a distance on this floor, to brand in your memory knowledge of how far that is! Still, that would take weeks, and I’ll neither feed nor clothe you less you’re working hard enough to pay me back!”

Accordingly that apprentice too got off with a smacking.

Persuaded at length that all was well below, as much as touched the making, storing and vending of his wares, he proceeded to the upper floor. This was partitioned into three large chambers. First he came into his own, luxurious, where stood a couch upholstered in deep warm bearhide and a little girl of ten or so was industriously polishing a pier-glass.

To her, he said nothing; to himself he murmured that it was a pity she was destined for the eventual enjoyment of Lord Garch. Otherwise …

But the woman from Rotten Tor, who had called here this evening with her daughter, had reminded him what a miasma of scandal had already attached itself to his business. There must never be any shred of proof to back it up! If there were, respectable folk would cease to apprentice their brats with him, who kept no wife nor even serving-maid. For that reason, the two other rooms on this story could be locked at night, and the keys remained always under his hand or pillow. One room for girls, the other for boys, they were in most regards identical, each containing heaps of rags soiled by long use and troughs into which at dawn and sunset he poured bucketsful of gruel for the apprentices to lap. Now and then he also accorded them scraps of bacon and the outer leaves of cabbages: experience having shown that without a morsel of meat and a nibble of greenstuff the children grew sickly – hence, unprofitable. He tolerated the extra expense, though he did begrudge it.

The chief source of his resentment, however, so far as baseless scandal was concerned, was that he would never dare admit the real reason why he did not abuse his youthful charges. In the lands ruled by Garch, claims of unalloyed morality rang false; on the other hand, the exercise of magic was a jealously-guarded monopoly, so were he to admit the truth he would most likely be haled forth and hung from a gibbet for the crows to pluck.

One further door remained at this level, and beyond it lay his secret. He opened it with the smallest of his many keys. Revealed was a steep flight of steps, hardly more than a slanted ladder, which he climbed. Despite the effort it required to haul his bulk to the top without dropping his lamp, he was humming a cheery strain when he emerged into the attic that it led to: a large open space lighted by two dusty dormers, lately refloored with well-planed boards that did not creak.

Below, although they applied themselves to their work, the apprentices found time – as usual – to whisper and make gestures with offensive import. One boy of fourteen, bolder than the rest, well inured to being beaten for his obduracy, filched a finger-sized piece of wax and began to shape it into human form. Pausing beside him, a girl offered criticism and comment; she had been pretty before a spill of boiling tallow seared a puckered scar down her left cheek. Others gathered to see what was happening, and suggested improvements. In a little while the likeness to their master was unmistakable, and they chuckled and clutched at one another in delight.

When the doll was perfected, they hid it in a chink between the planks of the wall, to furnish more amusement at some future time.

Overhead, unaware of this, Buldebrime approached the center of his attic room. There stood a stool adjacent to a table bearing five thick books, bound in leather from unconventional sources. Also there was a brazier, and a locked aumbry with carven doors hung from a mainpost of the roof. This last the lamp-seller opened, and removed from it a number of small articles: a bunch of feathers, a bag of herbs, and some vials of powder.

Watching from deep shadow, the traveller in black repressed a sigh. He hated these hole-in-corner enchanters, not merely because they were victims of the same paradox that had misled their more distinguished predecessors – desiring to control chaos for the sake of the power to be had from it, yet anxious not to destroy it by exerting overmuch control – but also because he’d found them mostly ignorant, discourteous and braggardly. Buldebrime seemed all too typical: having learned how to make his lamps burn bright against unusual dark, he thought himself a master of all magic arts, and was restrained from boasting solely by fear of a scandal that might deprive him of apprentices.

He did not attempt to make himself known. Had Buldebrime been half the adept that he liked to think he was, he would not have needed to be told there was a Presence in the room.

The lampmaker set out what was requisite for the sorcery he intended, bar one crucial item: a candle. …

And then, in the instant before he discovered that that candle was not where he thought it was, there came a thunderous hammering from the entrance to the shop, followed by a shouted order.

“Buldebrime!
Buldebrime!
Open in the name of Garch, the thegn of Cleftor Heights!”

So far, so good. The traveller gave a nod and took his secret leave.

V

There was a certain spot, a fair sward set with rocks flat-topped as though designed expressly to be sat upon, commanding a fine view of the thegn’s mansion and within lazy strolling distance of the villages nearest thereto. In any other community it might safely have been predicted that on the evening of a fine clear day, such as today had proved, local folk would tend to congregate here, bringing provender and beer and possibly a tabor and some fifes, to enjoy the pleasant outlook and reflect on their luck in serving so notably able a ruler.

Here, however, the safe prediction was that by late afternoon all who did not have utterly unavoidable business out of doors would have retreated to their homes, bolting and shuttering them against the onset of that unnatural dark which soaked up star- and firelight and bit into the bones with vicious teeth.

So indeed the case eventuated. The last herds were driven to their byres, the last flocks were folded, long before the sun touched the divided peaks of the Cleft Tor. As the shadows lengthened, the air grew thick, and a distasteful aura which had infected even the sunniest hours of the day curdled into a foretaste of the night to come.

Seated alongside a curving track, his staff across his knees, the traveller gazed towards Garch’s residence. It was a handsome edifice, if uninspired. Girdling it in the place of a curteyn wall there were low-roofed outbuildings perhaps two hundred paces by a hundred, constructed of grey stone, interrupted by a gate and speckled with windows. These enclosed a courtyard above ground level, whose cobbled surface concealed dungeons and other subterranean chambers, and from the center of this yard upreared a tower, or rather frustum, its sloping sides approximating the base of a cone. There were the private quarters of the thegn. Terminating its truncated top, there was a wooden winch-house, where by shifts a score or so of muscular deafmutes waited the signal to save Garch the effort of climbing stairs, by hauling on ropes to hoist a kind of palanquin steadied by greased poles and capable of being halted at any floor of the tower.

As the traveller studied the mansion, he saw servants emerge to set torches by the gate, though considerable time remained before sundown.

Eventually there came in sight around the bend of the road a sort of small procession. It began with a striding man-at-arms, staring suspiciously this way and that. It continued with a personage in the garb of a Shebya: blue cap, green coat and hose, black boots and silver spurs. He rode astride a palfrey. Then came a girl on foot, attired in pink as a page, but bosomed too conspicuously for there to be much chance of mistaking her sex, leading the first of a pair of pack mules whose wooden saddles were half empty, and lastly another man-at-arms leading the second mule. Such was a common spectacle in any well-governed realm; the Shebyas were the greatest traders of the age, and even the poorest among them possessed at least a couple of beasts and an attendant.