Heriot (23 page)

B
lackness still, but a different blackness from the one someone had fallen into in an earlier time. Someone … Ah! He was the someone who had fallen. Who was he? He was … he was Heriot Tarbas, the … the Magician … the Magician of Hoad. He had fallen … how long ago? Time had gone by, that was certain, but time was irrelevant. Still those cramps … still that agony in his eye … still the arrows of pain in his arms and shoulders …

‘Heriot,’ said a voice, then added, speaking to itself. ‘Well, that’s rough work. Nothing delicate there.’

The words were clear. The voice was a voice he knew, a voice he would remember for ever … that damaged voice, yet with a curious, struggling music implicit in its damage.

Heriot opened his eye … his contrary left eye … the right eye seemed to be too violated to be usable. There was light in the cell once more … a faint, flickering light … a flare, but he wasn’t looking directly into the light, simply staring down into a patchwork of shadows. The blackness, it seemed, had been entirely his own.

‘Come on!’ said the voice, speaking with impatience rather than sympathy. ‘We’ve only got a little slot of time. I’ve let you down a bit. Up on your feet! Move! Move!’

‘I don’t think I can,’ mumbled Heriot.

‘Try!’ the voice said. ‘Enchant yourself!’

And this time there was something in that voice that made Heriot jerk his head up and brace his feet against the floor … for it turned out he had feet after all.

‘Here!’ said the voice. ‘I’ve brought shoes … boots … for you. I’ll slide them on.’

Heriot felt someone handling his feet … felt his toes twisting yet again with cramp. But he was being shod by an unknown blacksmith. He looked downwards, which he could do all too easily.

There below him, defined by the fugitive light, was a head of scarlet braids wound into a crown. Someone was kneeling at those feet twisting with cramps … someone was working at one of his chains. As he stared down, Heriot felt the chain fall away from him. The cap of red braids rose. Eyes looked briefly into his own left eye. A mouth smiled. Hands rested briefly on his shoulders, then, as the eyes lifted, the hands rose too, to tinker with the lock on the chain that held his right hand above his head. ‘You can’t have forgotten me already,’ said that damaged voice. ‘Aren’t I grand these days?’ she said. Cayley leaned forwards and kissed him passionately. ‘There now! Remember that? And not so many people get kissed by an Assassin.’

Cayley had become a Wellwisher.

Set free, Heriot’s right hand fell to his side … fell so heavily he felt the weight of it tug him down towards the floor. But Cayley was already working on the left-hand chain.

‘Have you got a key?’ Heriot croaked. Cayley laughed very softly.

‘Not this time,’ she said, turning away from him, ‘but I’ve still got that old skill. Remember? I can work locks like they was my well-behaved family doing what I tell them. I don’t even have to shout at them.’

Now she had become nothing but a shadow once more,
turning away from him and using the first flare to light a small lamp. ‘What you’ll have to do is to lean on me to begin with,’ she said. ‘That Betony Hoad, he’s tried to reorder everything, wanting to damage his father, and that Hero has helped him, but he hasn’t stolen power from the Wellwishers yet. Not quite! Move your feet.’

‘They’ve forgotten how to move,’ Heriot said, ashamed of his immobility.

‘Remind them,’ said Cayley sharply.

The urgency of her voice made him struggle with feet that were trying to roll limply outward. The boots felt completely foreign.

‘Step!’ Cayley ordered impatiently. ‘I know it hurts, but take no notice. It’s just pain. You and me – we can be the masters of pain. We’ve got to use every minute we’ve got. Step!’

Heriot stepped. It seemed that every stiffened muscle, every inch of abused skin, his beaten knees in particular, screamed simultaneously to be left alone.

‘Again! Again!’ hissed Cayley. ‘There now, that’s better. I knew you could.’

Leaning on her shoulder, Heriot shuffled across the cell, turned and stumbled back again.

‘Do it by yourself,’ Cayley said, sliding away from him. Heriot tried to follow her instructions while Cayley bent over a narrow bag on the floor, but, pitching forward, he dropped on to his abused knees. He heard himself groaning.

‘Try again. And let your hair loose,’ Cayley ordered, speaking to him from under her arm. Heriot stood again and took a step with more confidence, enchanted with the triumph of a single step, even if pain was his partner. He put his hand up to his head only to find himself touching a totally unexpected stubble.

‘They’ve cut it,’ he cried, suddenly furious. ‘They’ve cut my hair.’ For it suddenly seemed to him that, by cutting his
hair, his enemies had completely severed him from Wish and Radley, from farm and family, and from what he most obstinately believed himself to be. A haircut was painless, yet it suddenly seemed to be the most ultimate violation of self.

‘That Prince, that Betony-the-Toad, is probably using it as a bookmark,’ said Cayley. ‘They say he’s a reading man. So keep walking!’

Curiously enough, anger at his shorn head filled Heriot with something approaching strength. He quickened his step. One knee surrendered again, but feeling its collapse coming, he shifted his weight and straightened himself, prepared now for the spears of pain that shot up and down his leg.

‘Now then,’ said Cayley. ‘Bend a little.’ And when Heriot did as he was told, Cayley tossed something over his stubbled head.

‘Arms!’ said Cayley. ‘Arms now! Work your arms. Hold them up.’ A moment later Heriot stood straight with folds of a skirt tumbling around him.

‘What’s this?’ he asked.

‘You’re dressed as one of the cleaning women,’ Cayley said. ‘Not that it works really well, you’re so tall. But then they don’t always look closely at cleaning women. Lean forward again.’ Heriot now felt something pulled forward over his head, then folded back from his eyes. ‘Lucky the cleaning women here wear hoods. The dress is really short on you, so bend over. Pity we can’t work out some exchange. I’m tall too, and I’m strong in the shoulders, but in my line of business I could do with being even broader. When the time comes I’ll have to make do, so let’s practise. Let’s make do now. There are two buckets outside the door … bit of water in one, brushes in the other. I thought they might have broken every joint in your body, but mainly what they’ve done is break your nose, which is nothing, really.’

‘They promised to come back and work me over again,’ Heriot said.

‘I’ll just bet they did,’ Cayley replied. ‘But I’ve got in first. Now, pick up those buckets, stoop forward … stoop far forward … and let’s go. That shuffle is good.’

‘I’m not acting. It’s all I can manage,’ said Heriot. He picked up the buckets, stooped forward, then shuffled ahead.

‘Look in front of you!’ Cayley commanded, and once again Heriot did as he was told.

They came out of the cell into a long curving gallery. A low roof twisted up over him in a shallow arch, and, even stooping, he felt his head was going to knock against it. On ahead of them, a flickering torch, set in a wall bracket, filled the gallery with a vague light.

‘On! On!’ hissed Cayley in that broken, urgent voice. ‘Walk towards the torch, and on around the bend. There’s a stair going up.’ Heriot began to walk ahead of Cayley, the buckets swinging in his hands. ‘There might be a guard, though, at this time of day, probably not. If there is a guard, today’s password is
Liberation.
Whisper it as if you were afraid of the guard. Once you’re up the stair, you turn to the right and wind around another bend. There’ll be another stair upward with two guards. The password for them is
Eminence
. Can you remember that, or have they shaken your brains to bits? Walk on quickly! Get ahead of me.’

The hall was lined with doors fitting so snugly it was difficult to distinguish them from the walls in which they were set. Once Heriot thought he heard a sound coming from behind one of them and hesitated.

‘Walk on!’ hissed the voice behind him.

It was just as Cayley had thought it might be. There was no guard at the first stair, but two men stood at the second, looking like unreliable shadows in the light of yet another flickering torch behind them.

‘Well, here’s a true Lady of Diamond,’ said one of them as
Heriot climbed the stairs. ‘And what’s the word today, sweetheart?’

‘Eminence!’ croaked Heriot.

‘Clever as well as beautiful,’ said the other guard. ‘What have you got in your buckets?’

‘Move her on!’ That was Cayley now coming up to the foot of the stair, and speaking impatiently. ‘Get her out of my way.’

Heriot suddenly found himself pushed forward and sideways.

‘Eminence,’ he heard Cayley say in the soft voice of a Wellwisher. And within the next moment she was striding ahead of him. Heriot shuffled after her as quickly as he could.

A door in the right-hand wall showed itself. Once again it was guarded, but there seemed to be no password needed. Cayley strode on through. The guards stood back for her, and Heriot followed, expecting a challenge, but none came. Step after step he struggled on, bracing himself against threatening collapse, following Cayley. Suddenly he knew where he was and where she was leading him. They were moving towards the door from Hoad’s Pleasure to the Third Ring of Diamond. A bridge between the prison and the city curved in front of them.

Once again the guards rapidly made way for Cayley.

‘I haven’t seen you before,’ one of them said to Heriot, who bobbed so that the buckets clanked against the ground, trying to angle himself so that his face was shadowed under the hood.

‘Let her go!’ said the other. ‘They’re always getting new cleaning women in Hoad’s Pleasure. After all, there’s always blood on the floor that needs mopping, even in times of peace, isn’t there? And probably a bit more these days, what with that Betony Hoad being such a sensitive King.’

Heriot’s shuffling footsteps set curious hollow echoes running ahead of him as he limped across the bridge. Then he was safely over it, and making, in his agonised fashion, for the
narrowest and darkest of the streets that fanned away from Hoad’s Pleasure.

‘No!’ said Cayley, almost at his shoulder now. She must have stepped aside and waited for him to catch up with her. ‘Follow me!’

‘Can I stand straight now?’ Heriot asked, though he wasn’t sure he would be able to stand straight ever again.

‘Just walk on,’ Cayley muttered, striding on ahead of him. ‘Not far to go.’

And now she was leading him into a street that seemed familiar, turning left into yet another street. Heriot felt Diamond advancing to meet him, enfolding him once more in its ancient embrace.

‘Right,’ said Cayley, speaking out of the shadows. ‘You can let those buckets fall, and stretch up if you can.’ Heriot unlocked his fingers, heard the buckets crash at his feet then roll away. He tried straightening himself.

‘I didn’t think it would be so easy, getting out of the tower and over the bridge,’ he said.

‘It isn’t easy,’ Cayley said. ‘But you had me to unlock your door and tell you the passwords. And when a Wellwisher walks by, that’s the one people look at, even the guards. And, though things are shifty at present, what with the King out at sea and his son playing games, it has been peace for a long time, hasn’t it? Things relax. The hard part was getting up the first stair, and we danced through that. Turn right along here.’

Heriot stumbled after her, swayed, fell against a wall, straightened himself and stumbled on again taking tiny steps, performing that painful dance. He understood there were closed doors on either side of them … humble doors … and sometimes dimly lit windows that seemed to blink as he limped slowly by. He got the impression from the smells of food in the air that he must be walking along a street that served the kitchens of the
grand houses of the Third Ring. And then, suddenly, he was aware of someone coming down the street towards them.

‘Cayley,’ he whispered, hearing panic in his voice.

‘Quiet,’ she whispered back. ‘No worries. It’s friends come to meet us.’

They were suddenly surrounded.

‘Is he all right?’ someone asked.

‘Nothing that won’t heal, given time,’ Cayley said. ‘He’s done amazingly well, considering what’s been done to him. Let’s move on quickly.’

‘We’re ready,’ said another voice. ‘No one will wonder if we leave early. No one wonders about us.’

‘Follow me,’ said Cayley to Heriot. ‘I know the way. Better to go through the wall rather than past a guardhouse.’

Heriot simply obeyed her, stumbling across streets, and squares, into a little park, down rough steps where he fell, only to be hoisted up again. Early morning was staining the sky over the Second Ring. His damaged knee collapsed under him and he fell yet again, but the others crowded in around him, pulling him back on to his feet and pushing him forward.

‘Bring him here,’ Heriot heard someone ordering. It was an accent he hadn’t heard for a long time, but it was a voice from a distant past – a voice he vaguely remembered. How long ago? Who? ‘Nearly there,’ Cayley was saying, distracting his wandering memory. ‘Only a few steps more. Can you see to step up?’

‘It’s a bit of a challenge,’ said Heriot, suddenly confident, stepping up with his good leg and then stepping up again. His companions closed in around him and hoisted him forward into a hooded wagon. Somewhere he could hear horses shifting in their harnesses.

‘Move on!’ said Cayley impatiently from somewhere behind him.

‘Welcome home,’ said that vaguely familiar voice. ‘You make
a considerable woman, don’t you? Lie down on the bunk there and I’ll do what I can to clean you up.’

The voice belonged to Azelma, the Travellers’ wise woman. Heriot was being taken in by the Travellers and, as he sighed with relief, closing his struggling right eye, swollen and weeping, he did indeed feel almost at home.

T
he Travellers travelled, and the land of Hoad opened to receive them. In the beginning they moved along wide, winding roads across gentle hills. Heriot, lying closed in Azelma's wagon, felt that wagon slowly tilting up then dipping down, up then down, and it seemed to him, as he lay in a dream of both pain and relief, that he was feeling the whole land of Hoad breathing, huge breaths deeper and slower than his own yet somehow in tune with them. He even felt that Hoad might be breathing for him, or that he could be doing what the Magicians were supposed to do – that he might be breathing for the land itself. And he felt, once again, his occupant stirring cautiously in his head.

At one stage the van came to rest. They had been stopped by soldiers of Hoad, who questioned the Travellers, and then began searching the vans.

‘They'll be in here in a minute,' Azelma said, sounding anxious for the first time. ‘We'll try hiding you, but …'

‘I might be able to hide myself,' said Heriot, and began thinking himself out of existence, relieved to find himself becoming something of a Magician once more, and, simultaneously, feeling relief at the prospect of becoming nothing. One of the soldiers came in, hesitating briefly at the door. The occupant shifted and touched the soldier's mind, altering his
perception. He went out again.

‘No one in there,' Heriot heard him calling.

‘A good trick, that,' said Azelma, sounding impressed.

‘I'm healing a bit,' Heriot replied. ‘I'm getting myself back again.'

‘But you lost yourself, back there,' Azelma said. ‘I felt it. Just for a moment you thought yourself out of the world.'

‘Everyone needs a break from existence,' Heriot answered lightly, and then added, ‘I didn't really think myself out of the world. What I really did was shift things in that man's mind. Yours too. You could both see me, but you didn't know what you were seeing.'

Why did you desert me back there?
he was silently asking his occupant.
Why did you let Betony bring me down so far?

The melting
, it said faintly.
We must save our strength for the
melting!

What melting?
Closing his eyes, Heriot sent this question back into his own head, but there was no answer.

After two days had gone by, Azelma and Cayley helped him out to the front of the van, and he was able to sit there for an hour or so, his injured leg stretched in front of him, and watch the world unwinding around him – watching mainly from his left eye, though his right was slowly recovering. The Travellers went though a series of small woods, then entered a great forest. The stillness of that forest seemed to impose silence upon them all. Even the Traveller children grew quiet, and they moved on, following a road that was clear but softened by leaves, so that, for a while, they were enclosed by an inexplicable tranquillity. Taking it all in, dreaming in that silence, Heriot felt himself somehow drifting, but with a profoundly purposeful drift. He was coming together again. Riding out from under
the forest branches was like breaking out of enchantment. Voices rose again; someone somewhere laughed; children began shouting and arguing once more. They camped and slept, then woke and took to the road again, now following the course of a river for a few leagues before it spread out, growing wide and shallow, when they crossed it at a stony ford and came into farmlands, which meant Heriot had to go back inside the wagon once more in case he was seen and commented on, which might mean some rumour winding its way back to Diamond. After all, the Travellers were still travelling in Hoad.

At first this journey seemed timeless … Heriot, more than willing to surrender to the farms and forest and river he saw around him, didn't care where they were going … but little by little curiosity came alive in him.

‘How long have we been going?' he asked.

‘Only a week,' said Azelma. ‘Lie still!'

‘I'm feeling better,' Heriot said.

‘Lie still,' Cayley told him sternly. Her broken voice was amused yet just a little ominous too. ‘I've owed you all these years. Now you owe me. You do what I tell you.'

‘We're well out of Diamond,' Azelma said. ‘They've checked us so they're letting us go on. All the same …'

‘All the same …' echoed Cayley.

After a moment Heriot began, gingerly, to feel his face.

‘And stop that,' Cayley told him. ‘I'll let you know everything you need to know. Like, you've got a smashed nose. You'll never be pretty again.'

‘Forget being pretty. It hurts to laugh,' Heriot said restlessly. ‘That's the worst of it.'

‘Then I'll tell you nothing but sad stories,' Cayley promised him.

It seemed to Heriot that, despite the fact he was still racked with various pains, despite being dominated by a huge and
puzzling weakness that seemed, in a curious way, to go all the way back to that strange seizure he had experienced as a boy out on the causeway, he was somehow more at rest with himself than he had been for years. He was beyond Diamond … free of the King's zoo … free of the haunting mazes of the city … even free of his strange friendship with Dysart, all things that had become part of him but which had also, somehow, further divided his divided self. He wasn't tempted to ask the Travellers in what direction they were travelling. He wasn't tempted to ask for any map of Hoad they might have. He thought that, anyway, they probably had no maps except for one single map that was part of every Traveller mind, every Traveller dream, every Traveller movement, as they slid silently across the land, following tracks they had followed for hundreds of years. And, as he healed, Heriot found himself invaded by a curious lightness, which he thought he recognised.

‘It's happiness,' he said aloud, and looked with astonishment at Cayley, hunched in beside the bunk in which he lay. She looked back at him curiously. ‘I'm not just interested. I'm happy – truly happy!' he exclaimed incredulously.

‘Good on you,' she said. ‘Now me – I don't know if I've ever been that … well, not since I was learning to walk … I was happy back then, I think. But at times I do feel relief. Ease. A sort of sunny ease. I feel it now. For a while. It won't last but I'll enjoy it while I can.'

‘Why won't it last?' Heriot asked curiously.

‘I've told you. There's this thing I have to do,' she replied. ‘Just the one thing, but it's like a commandment coming out of me … out of my heart. Out of my head. It was laid on me back when I was a child and by now it's worked right into me, so it's in every heartbeat. I even breathe it in from the air. I'll never be completed until that thing's over and done. And don't you try reading it out of me. I'll tell you when the time comes.'

‘I've never been able to read you,' Heriot said. ‘And I'm not even sure if I'm a true Magician any more. I hung there in chains and I couldn't help myself.'

And mumbling this, Heriot fell asleep yet again. Cayley sat there, staring at him with an expression of puzzlement and desire.

‘Free!' Heriot muttered in his sleep. ‘Free of it all!'