Read The Very Best of Tad Williams Online
Authors: Tad Williams
Tags: #Fiction, #Fantasy, #General, #Collections & Anthologies
Just as I was beginning to find my way, inventing a continuation of the vizier’s Darian political meanderings, there came a shock that passed through all of us like a cold wind, and a new shadow appeared at the edge of the clearing. The vampyr had joined us.
Walid moaned and sat up, huddling by the fire. I faltered for a moment but went on. The candle-flame eyes regarded us unblinkingly, and the shadow shook for a moment as if folding great wings.
Suddenly Fawn leaped to his feet, swaying unsteadily. I lost the strands of the story completely and stared up at him in amazement.
“Creature!” he screamed. “Hell-spawn! Why do you torment us in this way? Why, why, why?”
Ibn Fahad reached up to pull him down, but the young man danced away like a shying horse. His mouth hung open and his eyes were starting from their dark-rimmed sockets.
“You great beast!” he continued to shriek. “Why do you toy with us? Why do you not just kill me—kill us
all
, set us free from this terrible, terrible...”
And with that he walked
forward
—away from the fire, toward the thing that crouched at forest’s edge.
“End this now!” Fawn shouted, and fell to his knees only a few strides from the smoldering red eyes, sobbing like a child.
“Stupid boy, get back!” I cried. Before I could get up to pull him back—and I would have, I swear by Allah’s name—there was a great rushing noise, and the black shape was gone, the lamps of its stare extinguished. Then, as we pulled the shuddering youth back to the campfire, something rustled in the trees. On the opposite side of the campfire one of the near branches suddenly bobbed beneath the weight of a strange new fruit—a black fruit with red-lit eyes. It made an awful croaking noise.
In our shock it was a few moments before we realized that the deep, rasping sound was speech—and the words were Arabic!
“...It...was...you...” it said, “...who chose...to play the game this way...”
Almost strangest of all, I would swear that this thing had never spoken our language before, never even heard it until we had wandered lost into the mountains. Something of its halting inflections, its strange hesitations, made me guess it had learned our speech from listening all these nights to our campfire stories.
“Demon!” shrilled Abdallah. “What manner of creature are you?!”
“You know...very well what kind of...thing I am, man. You may none of you know
how
, or
why
...but by now, you know
what
I am.”
“Why...why do you torment us so?!” shouted Fawn, writhing in Ibn Fahad’s strong grasp.
“Why does the...serpent kill...a rabbit? The serpent does not...hate. It kills to live, as do I...as do you.”
Abdallah lurched forward a step. “We do not slaughter our fellow men like this, devil-spawn!”
“C-c-clerk!” the black shape hissed, and dropped down from the tree. “C-close your foolish mouth! You push me too far!” It bobbed, as if agitated. “The curse of human ways! Even now you provoke me more than you should, you huffing...insect!
Enough!”
The vampyr seemed to leap upward, and with a great rattling of leaves he scuttled away along the limb of a tall tree. I was fumbling for my sword, but before I could find it the creature spoke again from his high perch.
“The young one asked me why I ‘toy’ with you. I do not. If I do not kill, I will suffer. More than I suffer already.
“Despite what this clerk says, though, I am not a creature without... without feelings as men have them. Less and less do I wish to destroy you.
“For the first time in a great age I have listened to the sound of human voices that were not screams of fear. I have approached a circle of men without the barking of dogs, and have listened to them talk.
“It has almost been like being a man again.”
“And this is how you show your pleasure?” the under-vizier Walid asked, teeth chattering. “By k-k-killing us?”
“I am what I am,” said the beast. “...But for all that, you have inspired a certain desire for companionship. It puts me in mind of things that I can barely remember.
“I propose that we make a...bargain,” said the vampyr. “A...wager?”
I had found my sword, and Ibn Fahad had drawn his as well, but we both knew we could not kill a thing like this—a red-eyed demon that could leap five cubits in the air and had learned to speak our language in a fortnight.
“No bargains with Shaitan!” spat the clerk Abdallah.
“What do you mean?” I demanded, inwardly marveling that such an unlikely dialogue should ever take place on the earth. “Pay no attention to the...” I curled my lip, “...holy man.” Abdallah shot me a venomous glance.
“Hear me, then,” the creature said, and in the deep recesses of the tree seemed once more to unfold and stretch great wings. “Hear me. I must kill to live, and my nature is such that I cannot choose to die. That is the way of things.
“I offer you now, however, the chance to win safe passage out of my domain, these hills. We shall have a contest, a wager if you like; if you best me you shall go freely, and I shall turn once more to the musty, slow-blooded peasants of the local valleys.”
Ibn Fahad laughed bitterly. “What, are we to fight you then? So be it!”
“I would snap your spine like a dry branch,” croaked the black shape. “No, you have held me these many nights telling stories; it is storytelling that will win you safe passage. We will have a contest, one that will suit my whims: we shall relate the saddest of all stories. That is my demand. You may tell three, I will tell only one. If you can best me with any or all, you shall go unhindered by me.”
“And if we lose?!” I cried. “And who shall judge?”
“You may judge,” it said, and the deep, thick voice took on a tone of grim amusement. “If you can look into my eyes and tell me that you have bested
my
sad tale...why, then I shall believe you.
“If you lose,” it said, “then one of your number shall come to me, and pay the price of your defeat. Those are my terms, otherwise I shall hunt you down one at a time—for in truth, your present tale-telling has begun to lose my interest.”
Ibn Fahad darted a worried look in my direction. Fawn and the others stared at the demon-shape in mute terror and astonishment.
“We shall...we shall give you our decision at sunset tomorrow,” I said. “We must be allowed to think and talk.”
“As you wish,” said the vampyr. “But if you accept my challenge, the game must begin then. After all, we have only a few more days to spend together.” And at this the terrible creature laughed, a sound like the bark being pulled from the trunk of a rotted tree. Then the shadow was gone.
In the end we had to accede to the creature’s wager, of course. We knew he was not wrong in his assessment of us—we were just wagging our beards over the nightly campfire, no longer even listening to our own tales. Whatever magic had held the vampyr at bay had drained out like meal from a torn sack.
I racked my poor brains all afternoon for stories of sadness, but could think of nothing that seemed to fit, that seemed significant enough for the vital purpose at hand. I had been doing most of the talking for several nights running, and had exhausted virtually every story I had ever heard—and I was never much good at making them up, as Ibn Fahad will attest. Yes, go ahead and smile, old comrade.
Actually, it was Ibn Fahad who volunteered the first tale. I asked him what it was, but he would not tell me. “Let me save what potency it may have,” he said. The under-vizier Walid also had something he deemed suitable; I was racking my brain fruitlessly for a third time when young Fawn piped up that he would tell a tale himself. I looked him over, rosy cheeks and long-lashed eyes, and asked him what he could possibly know of sadness. Even as I spoke I realized my cruelty, standing as we all did in the shadow of death or worse, but it was too late to take it back.
Fawn did not flinch. He was folding his cloak as he sat cross-ankled on the ground, folding and unfolding it. He looked up and said: “I shall tell a sad story about love. All the saddest stories are about love.”
These young shavetails,
I thought—although I was not ten years his senior—
a sad story about love.
But I could not think of better, and was forced to give in.
We walked as fast and far as we could that day, as if hoping that somehow, against all reason, we should find ourselves out of the gloomy, mist-sodden hills. But when twilight came the vast bulk of the mountains still hung above us. We made camp on the porch of a great standing rock, as though protection at our backs would avail us of something if the night went badly.
The fire had only just taken hold, and the sun had dipped below the rim of the hills a moment before, when a cold wind made the branches of the trees whip back and forth. We knew without speaking, without looking at one another, that the creature had come.
“Have you made your decision?” The harsh voice from the trees sounded strange, as if its owner was trying to speak lightly, carelessly—but I only heard death in those cold syllables.
“We have,” said Ibn Fahad, drawing himself up out of his involuntary half-crouch to stand erect. “We will accept your wager. Do you wish to begin?”
“Oh, no...” the thing said, and made a flapping noise. “That would take all of the...suspense from the contest, would it not? No, I insist that you begin.”
“I am first, then,” Ibn Fahad said, looking around our circle for confirmation. The dark shape moved abruptly toward us. Before we could scatter the vampyr stopped, a few short steps away.
“Do not fear,” it grated. Close to one’s ear the voice was even odder and more strained. “I have come nearer to hear the story and see the teller—for surely that is part of any tale—but I shall move no farther. Begin.”
Everybody but myself stared into the fire, hugging their knees, keeping their eyes averted from the bundle of darkness that sat at our shoulders. I had the fire between myself and the creature, and felt safer than if I had sat like Walid and Abdallah, with nothing between the beast and my back but cold ground.
The vampyr sat hunched, as if imitating our posture, its eyes hooded so that only a flicker of scarlet light, like a half-buried brand, showed through each slit. It was black, this manlike thing—not black as a Negro, mind you, but black as burnt steel, black as the mouth of a cave. It bore the aspect of someone dead of the plague. Rags wrapped it, mouldering, filthy bits of cloth, rotten as old bread...but the curve of its back spoke of terrible life—a great black cricket poised to jump.
Ibn Fahad’s Story
Many years ago [he began], I traveled for a good time in Egypt. I was indigent, then, and journeyed wherever the prospect of payment for a sword arm beckoned.
I found myself at last in the household guard of a rich merchant in Alexandria. I was happy enough there; and I enjoyed walking in the busy streets, so unlike the village in which I was born.
One summer evening I found myself walking down an unfamiliar street. It emptied out into a little square that sat below the front of an old mosque. The square was full of people: merchants and fishwives, a juggler or two, but most of the crowd was drawn up to the facade of the mosque, pressed in close together.
At first, as I strolled across the square, I thought prayers were about to begin, but it was still some time until sunset. I wondered if perhaps some notable imam was speaking from the mosque steps, but as I approached I could see that all the assembly were staring upward, craning their necks back as if the sun itself, on its way to its western mooring, had become snagged on one of the minarets.
But instead of the sun, what stood on the onion-shaped dome was the silhouette of a man, who seemed to be staring out toward the horizon.
“Who is that?” I asked a man near me.
“It is Ha’arud al-Emwiya, the Sufi,” the man told me, never lowering his eyes from the tower above.
“Is he caught up there?” I demanded. “Will he not fall?”
“Watch,” was all the man said. I did.
A moment later, much to my horror, the small dark figure of Ha’arud the Sufi seemed to go rigid, then toppled from the minaret’s rim like a stone. I gasped in shock, and so did a few others around me, but the rest of the crowd only stood in hushed attention.
Then an incredible thing happened. The tumbling holy man spread his arms out from his shoulders, like a bird’s wings, and his downward fall became a swooping glide. He bottomed out high above the crowd, then sped upward, riding the wind like a leaf, spinning, somersaulting, stopping at last to drift to the ground as gently as a bit of eiderdown. Meanwhile, all the assembly was chanting “God is great! God is great!” When the Sufi had touched the earth with his bare feet the people surrounded him, touching his rough woolen garments and crying out his name. He said nothing, only stood and smiled, and before too long the people began to wander away, talking amongst themselves.
“But this is truly marvelous!” I said to the man who stood by me.
“Before every holy day he flies,” the man said, and shrugged. “I am surprised this is the first time you have heard of Ha’arud al-Emwiya.”
I was determined to speak to this amazing man, and as the crowd dispersed I approached and asked if I might buy him a glass of tea. Close up he had a look of seamed roguishness that seemed surprising placed against the great favor in which Allah must have held him. He smilingly agreed, and accompanied me to a tea shop close by in the Street of Weavers.
“How is it, if you will pardon my forwardness, that you of all holy men are so gifted?”
He looked up from the tea cupped in his palms and grinned. He had only two teeth. “Balance,” he said.
I was surprised. “A cat has balance,” I responded, “but they nevertheless must wait for the pigeons to land.”
“I refer to a different sort of balance,” he said. “The balance between Allah and Shaitan, which, as you know, Allah the All-Knowing has created as an equilibrium of exquisite delicacy.”
“Explain please, master.” I called for wine, but Ha’arud refused any himself.
“In all things care must be exercised,” he explained. “Thus it is too with my flying. Many men holier than I are as earthbound as stones. Many other men have lived so poorly as to shame the Devil himself, yet they cannot take to the air, either. Only I, if I may be excused what sounds self-satisfied, have discovered perfect balance. Thus, each year before the holy days I tot up my score carefully, committing small peccadilloes or acts of faith as needed until the balance is exactly, exactly balanced. Thus, when I jump from the mosque, neither Allah nor the Arch-Enemy has claim on my soul, and they bear me up until a later date, at which time the issue shall be clearer.” He smiled again and drained his tea.
“You are...a sort of chessboard on which God and the Devil contend?” I asked, perplexed.
“A flying chessboard, yes.”
We talked for a long while, as the shadows grew long across the Street of the Weavers, but the Sufi Ha’arud adhered stubbornly to his explanation. I must have seemed disbelieving, for he finally proposed that we ascend to the top of the mosque so he could demonstrate.
I was more than a little drunk, and he, imbibing only tea, was filled nonetheless with a strange gleefulness. We made our way up the many winding stairs and climbed out onto the narrow ledge that circled the minaret like a crown. The cool night air, and the thousands of winking lights of Alexandria far below, sobered me rapidly. “I suddenly find all your precepts very sound,” I said. “Let us go down.”
But Ha’arud would have none of it, and proceeded to step lightly off the edge of the dome. He hovered, like a bumblebee, a hundred feet above the dusty street. “Balance,” he said with great satisfaction.
“But,” I asked, “is the good deed of giving me this demonstration enough to offset the pride with which you exhibit your skill?” I was cold and wanted to get down, and hoped to shorten the exhibition.
Instead, hearing my question, Ha’arud screwed up his face as though it was something he had not given thought to. A moment later, with a shriek of surprise, he plummeted down out of my sight to smash on the mosque’s stone steps, as dead as dead.
Ibn Fahad, having lost himself in remembering the story, poked at the campfire. “Thus, the problem with matters of delicate balance,” he said, and shook his head.
The whispering rustle of our dark visitor brought us sharply back. “Interesting,” the creature rasped. “Sad, yes. Sad enough? We shall see. Who is the next of your number?”
A cold chill, like fever, swept over me at those calm words.
“I...I am next...” said Fawn, voice taut as a bowstring. “Shall I begin?”
“The vampyr said nothing, only bobbed the black lump of his head. The youth cleared his throat and began.