The Infinity Concerto (9 page)

"Let me alone!" he shouted. He grabbed the pike but it seemed to have sharp edges all around and cut his fingers.

"You don't belong here," the Sidhe growled. "Do you know who I am?"

"No!"

"I am Alyons, Wickmaster of the Blasted Plain and Pact Lands. Some call me Scarbita Antros - Scourge of Men. How did you get here? Why are you living in a house of wood?"

"I was sent here," Michael said. His fear melted any anger he felt, but seemed to heighten his perceptions. Even in the dark he could see Alyons in detail: a spectral face and long, blood-red hair; huge eyes with reverse epicanthic folds; long-fingered hands gripping his pike, their nails trimmed to metallic points; boots made from the same silvery-gray material as the saddle; pearl-gray cape hanging loose around his shoulders to his calves. "Quosfera antros, to suma antros."

"The boy is in our charge."

Michael recognized Nare's acid voice. She stood to one side, between them and the Crane Women's hut, and Spart stood on the other side. Michael couldn't see Coom. Alyons made no move, but his hands applied an ounce more pressure to the pike. Michael felt it scraping bone and tried not to squirm again. "What is he doing here?" Alyons asked, eyes still on Michael, like a hunter unwilling to release his prey.

"I have told you," Nare repeated. "He is in our charge."

"He's human. You don't train humans."

There was a rapid exchange in Sidhe between Spart and the Wickmaster. Alyons' face filled with deep-set lines of hate, turning his smooth chiseled features into a mummy mask. He lifted the pike a hair's breadth. "If I kill the boy, I remove a burden, no?"

"Probably," Spart said. "But what would we do to you, in turn?"

"You're t'al antros," Alyons said contemptuously. Coom stepped from the shadows behind him.

"We are very, very old," Spart said, "and the Sidhe of the Irall come to us to ask questions. Would you like your name mentioned when we respond - horsethief?"

The lines of Alyons' face deepened, if that were possible. "It wouldn't upset me," he said. He lifted the pike a hair.

"And when Adonna's priest comes for temelos?" Spart asked.

Coom cropped a hand on Alyons' shoulder and pulled him roughly away, dragging his face down to her level. "Ours!"

"Then take him," Alyons said with great calmness. He shrugged her off and walked to his horse, seeming to glide on rather than jump. "But I will go to the Arborals and question the grace of wood."

"They brought it," Nare said.

"You are a crude and foolish fricht," Spart said.

"Ours," Coom repeated.

Alyons leaned forward and the horse seemed to turn to smoke, every curve blurring and smoothing. Then, in silence, they were gone. Michael lay on the dirt, his chest bleeding sluggishly, his hands bloody from contact with the pike. The Crane Women were gone, as well.

He got to his feet and made for the shelter of the house. Inside, he tried to keep his lungs from heaving and held his mouth with his bloody hands to stifle sobs. He wasn't sure what had just happened - whether the Crane Women had tested him, or he had actually been visited by Alyons. The Sidhe's voice still haunted his ears, rich and deadly as venom.

Even now, Michael could hardly keep awake. There was a vibrant chirping nearby, repeated several times - birds? - and that was the last thing he remembered until his arm was grabbed. "Get out of my house," he said groggily.

"Jan antros." Coom leaned over him, the light of dawn through the door outlining the side of her head. "Not eyes-full! We promise test."

He didn't think he was dreaming - dreams seemed to have no place in the Realm - but he wanted to believe he was. "Go away," he said, "please." And he was alone in the hut.

Morning came and went, and the day, and it was near evening again when he awoke, stiff and still exhausted. He felt his chest. The blood had clotted and the wound had been smeared with white paste. It was tender but didn't ache. The cuts on his hands had scabbed over.

There was a bowl of mush and fruit by the door. He ate slowly with his fingers, his head full of fog. He was past all thought. The temptation to throw it in was strong, congruent with the pain in his body and the tiredness clamped to every muscle.

When he finished eating, he rolled over and looked at the dirt floor. Idly, he drew a line in the dirt with his finger, then wrote a line of words, and another, half-purposefully, until he had scrawled a poem.

The scraping on the roof at night -

Chitin or nail or stiff, hot hair -

In dark of August, summer's heat

Constructs a limb of dust and air.

If you step out to watch the clouds,

Silent lightning will prance and grin.

While on the roof the summer waits

And if you try to go back in.

Why, Hello! The season is a spider.

Half the time, when he wrote a poem, he had no idea what it meant. The back of his head seemed disconnected from all present circumstance, as though facts and images seeped in slowly and were jumbled along the way.

But the menace was obvious. He was scared clear through, and he had no way to fight his fear. Not yet, perhaps not ever.

He stood by the door of his house and watched the sun go down, hands in his pants pocket. Nare came out of the hut and strode toward him. When they were face to face, she took his hands in hers and peered at the palms, then pulled apart his blood-stained shirt and examined his chest.

"How did I do?" Michael asked with an edge of bitterness.

"You are no good to us asleep. You were to go to the market today, get yourself a card."

"I mean, how did I do last night?"

"Terribly," she said. "He would have killed you. And later. you are a terrible warrior."

"I never wanted to be a warrior," he said incredulously.

She held out her twiggish fingers and shrugged elegantly. "The choice is to be one, or die," she said. "Your choice."

Coom and Spart crossed the stream and entered the hut.

As Nare stood motionless beside him and Michael waited nervously, the stars twirled into view. Coom and Spart emerged with eight long torches and began staking them in a circle between the house and the stream. They lighted the torches by cupping their hands behind the wick and blowing on them. Sparks and flame shot up into the night and an orange circle of light shimmered within the perimeter.

"Time is difficult to measure in the Realm," Spart said, approaching Michael and taking him by the hand. The sensation of her long, strong fingers around his own quelled any protest. She led him into the circle and motioned for Coom to join them. "You will learn our functions now," Spart said. "Coom is an expert in what the Sidhe call isray, physical combat. Nare is versed in stray, preparation of the mind. And I will teach victory, the avoidance of battle as a means to victory. Tonight, since it is the simplest and easiest of the three, you will learn from Coom the beginnings of how to survive a fight with human or Sidhe."

Coom walked around Michael slowly, with high, almost prancing steps. Nare and Spart watched from outside the circle of torches. Michael regarded Coom warily, hands at his sides, head inclined slightly. He jumped as she reached down and grabbed a leg to reposition it. "Don't fall over," she said. "Like stool. One leg to be like two." She continued her circling. "Morning, you run to Halftown, run back. Tonight, you just stand up." She shot out one arm and pushed him. He promptly fell on his butt and scrambled to his feet again. She reached out and shoved once more. He stumbled but stayed upright. She circled and shoved from another angle. He toppled forward on his face. "Like stool," she repeated. She shoved again, and again, but he remained standing.

His face was flushed and his jaw hurt from clenching his teeth, but he was surprised at how calm he felt. The methodic circling, shoving, went on for an hour until he kept his balance no matter what angle Coom attacked from.

The torches guttered. "Ears," Coom said. Nare and Spart extinguished the feeble flames. Clouds obscured the stars now; except for the feverish orange glow from the hut windows, there was no illumination. He couldn't see any of the Crane Women. He listened to the sound of their feet moving, trying to guess how many circled him. A hand pushed hard on his back and he went to one knee, then got up quickly.

"Ears," Coom said again. He sensed a footfall nearby and braced himself instinctively in the opposite direction. The blow came, but he kept his balance. j Another hour passed. He was groggy and his legs ached abominably. His shoulders were sore and swollen. For a time he rotated in the darkness, until he realized he couldn't hear their footfalls any more. He was alone. The Crane Women had f returned to their hut.

He felt his way to his house and collapsed in a corner. He couldn't sleep. He rubbed his arms and shoulders and contemplated past gym classes, where he had never performed enthusiastically. It wasn't a matter of being weak or gimpy; he could run well enough, and his frame was sound. Michael had just never cared that much, and the gym teachers had seldom in spired confidence in those who didn't profess to be jocks.

Inspiration wasn't the issue here. Whatever he thought, however miserable he was, tomorrow he would run until he dropped - which he was sure he would. No protests, no complaints.

After the incident with Alyons, Michael fully appreciated his position.

Obviously, things could get much worse.

Chapter Eight

"The Sidhe do not use swords," Spart told Michael. They squatted on the ground outside his house, legs crossed, facing each other.

"But Alyons has a pike-"

"That is his wick. He uses it only against humans."

Michael nodded and looked away, resigned to the ambiguities. Spart sighed and leaned toward him.

"You are supposed to wonder what Alyons does with his wick."

"Act wicked?" Michael said, trying for a smile. Spart leaned back and narrowed her eyes to even tighter slits. "Okay," he gave in. "What does he do with it?"

"The wick is his symbol of rank. It confers his power of office, of labor. It signifies that he has the strength to guard the Blasted Plain and the Pact Lands, and to uphold the pact made between Sidhe and the Isomage."

"So why did he stab me with it?"

"He hates humans, like many Sidhe."

"Do you hate humans?"

"Tal antros," she said, tapping her chest with her finger. "I am half-human."

"Why don't Sidhe use swords?"

"They have no need. A Sidhe warrior is frightening enough without. And there is honor involved. Death is final for a Sidhe; there is nothing beyond except being pressed into a tree by the Arborals. That is not even half a life. So it has been established that the Sidhe may combat each other only by means dependent on their own skill and power, by which we mean magic and strength of will."

"I'm going to learn magic?"

Spart shook her head. "No humans ever conquer Sidhe magic. You'll have to learn how to flee, how to be inconspicuous. You cannot hope to best a Sidhe in grand combat. Your only chance is that a Sidhe will consider combat with a human shameful, worth only small effort. Take advantage of that. In the rare instances where you might be called into grand combat-" She slapped her hand against the dirt. "You will simply die. Dying in the Realm is as permanent for humans as death anywhere for a Sidhe. So do not provoke a warrior."

"I don't understand-"

"You will, in time. Now you will go to Halftown, do our errands. After, you will run. There is an order of grains to be delivered here, and you will-"

"I know. Ask for food for myself."

Spart regarded him with infinite patience, blinked slowly and turned away.

Halftown was quiet, matching the somber, overcast morning. Michael tried being cordial to the Breeds, but they returned no greetings; curiosity about him seemed to have lapsed. They were like ghosts intent on some irrevocable task; only a few of the women had any obvious hint of life and joy in them.

Michael followed the curving market street, which branched from the main road near the center of Halftown. The lone market consisted of a house (in Cascar, a caersidh, pronounced roughly "ker-shi"), round like most of the others, and a covered courtyard twice the area of the house itself. The courtyard was filled with tables and shelves stacked with provisions - foods in one corner, housewares, liquors (in bottles which looked suspiciously like the ones in Brecker's cellar in Euterpe) in another, and the simple types of clothing in a third. The middle of the courtyard was the counter, and there the market manager held sway.

Spart had said his name was Lirg. He had a daughter, Eleuth, the one who had delivered milk to the Crane Women's hut. Lirg never took cash - the Sidhe abhorred money, which seemed a bit strange to Michael, considering the legends of pots of gold and such - but kept careful track of Halftown's balances. Michael gathered the economy was loosely based on fulfillment of assigned tasks and dispersal of goods according to need.

Not unlike the simpler forms of communism he had learned about in Mr. Wagner's class at school. Allotments of supplies were brought across the Blasted Plain. As Michael skirted the courtyard, three large, big-wheeled wagons, each drawn by two Sidhe horses, lumbered in from the opposite end of the market street.

The wagons were filled with food and supplies. A Sidhe driver sat on the lead wagon, tall and aloof, dressed in iridescent browns, the cut of his clothes not substantially different from that of Alyons, except he wore no armor and carried no wick. The horses were lathered as if they had been driven hard, and a peculiar golden glow lifted from the backs of the wagons like sunlit dust. The glow dissipated, leaving a sweet-bitter scent in the air. Lirg stepped down from his counter and directed the unloading of the supplies. The Sidhe driver took down his tailgates and several passersby pitched in to help. Few words were exchanged. The supplies were either carried into a covered shed in the fourth corner of the courtyard, or placed directly in the market stalls. There was no rush to inspect the goods; they differed not in the slightest from those already available, and assured only continuity, not variety.