The Magician of Hoad (12 page)

Now there was something new to be talked about. There was astonishment beyond reason… an assertion of the power of Hoad. And the next day a wild rumor began to circulate. The King’s Magician, the strange Izachel, had vanished. There was no longer a man of mystery to stand at the King’s elbow to tell who was being devious, who was lying, who was planning alternative possibilities to those the King preferred. Izachel had gone.

But by then the King’s Peace was mostly worked out between Hoad and the Dannorad. The King had been
formidable, yet generous in a way no victor in history had ever been. With or without his Magician to tell tales on other men at the table, his agreements and treaties would be signed and the Peace of Hoad would become more than a dream. And, the rumors ran, he already had a new Magician, a strange child of power. The land of Hoad might have taken away one blessing from its King, but, so the whisper went, it had delivered another.

Linnet didn’t get a chance to speak to Dysart again on the edge of the battlefield, yet on her way back to Hagen, and over the next five years, she thought about him every day, remembering him, tiny but untrodden and triumphant, making it seem, for the moment, that he was the true center of that great plain set in the ring of mountains, able to hug the sunset, the charging horses, Linnet of Hagen, and time itself, every wild moment of it, along with everything around him, to his heart.

Diamond!
thought Heriot, looking out at the world but keeping his horse’s ears in his line of vision. He was grateful that, in this world where everything else was too dissolving to be guessed about, he could still recognize a horse and still feel himself to be a confident rider.
I’m being taken to Diamond. I’m being treated with glory.
He laughed, shaking his head.

The horses ahead seemed to be moving up into the air, then sinking away. The King’s procession had been winding up a hill—one of a line of hills—and now it had begun winding down again. Heriot and Dysart, following the flow, came in turn to the hilltop and were able to look down on the other side.

There, where a broad river met the sea, on a delta made up of little islands, was the confusion of a great port, and behind the port a city contained by a straggling outer wall and two inner walls, one inside the other. It was a city of guildhalls, libraries, arching galleries, markets, houses, and streets whose intersections were celebrated with conduits,
fountains, and statues. From the hilltop Heriot felt as if the city already knew him and had leaped forward to take him over. His first sight of Diamond was like a soft explosion somewhere inside his head, but by now he knew his head was untrustworthy. The city was too big to be looked at properly, even from the hilltop. There was one shape, however, that stood above all others, seeming to stare directly yet blankly back at him.

At the city’s heart, set on a long island in the river, a huge irregular shape pointed to the sky, sprawling sideways even as it stretched upward—a castle with four towers. And just beyond those towers on the far side of the river lay yet another great block of stone, a building so dark it seemed at first to be a deep shadow cast by one of the towers. Remembering the stories of his brother, Wish, and Nesbit, Heriot was suddenly sure he was looking at Guard-on-the-Rock, the King’s home, and its black companion, the huge prison known as Hoad’s Pleasure, humped and poised like a monster, blind and crouching, about to spring out on the world. The biggest tower, the one standing at the head of the island, looking out to sea, was the oldest—older than history itself.

When the men of Hoad first sailed up to the mouth of the Bramber River, they found an empty country… or so their particular story declared, since they didn’t count the Travelers or the tribes and families, like Heriot’s own, as a real population. Yet that old tower, the Tower of the Lion (like the Tarbas ruins and the broken aqueduct) had been standing there to greet them, proving that well before the days of the first Hoadish King there had been a powerful
people in the land… people who had vanished, leaving empty shells behind.

The tower just behind it must be the Tower of the Swan, the tower of the old Queen and her women. That third tower, built of dark stone, would be the Tower of the Crow. After that Heriot had no idea. Impressed without wanting to be impressed, Heriot followed Dysart down the hill toward the first of the city gates, riding into early afternoon.

Passing through a grubby outer settlement, they came at last to the first wide gate, set between squat towers from which they were watched but not challenged. They moved on through the gate into a street so crowded it seemed that even the procession of a powerful King must be halted. But people hurried to stand back, bowing their heads as the King rode toward them, and then, as his horse moved on, they began shouting and waving, somehow becoming part of his victorious progress. Everyone in these streets seemed to have blond or brown hair, blue or gray eyes. Everyone appeared to belong to a different race from Heriot’s own.

“This is the Third Ring of Diamond,” Dysart called across to him.

“I knew it must be,” Heriot replied, not wanting to seem too much of an ignorant peasant.

One marketplace, crowded with stalls, then another, and a few streets farther on, a third. The markets were not hugely busy, for most business was concluded in the morning. Nevertheless Heriot was confounded. People shouted up at him and he received an unwelcome shock, for though
the crowd was genial he could barely understand a word they were saying. There were so many voices and so many accents all struggling against one another.

The idea that he was dreaming, that at any moment he would wake up at home or under the tree by the road, nudged Heriot continually. He knew his clothes and his long hair must make him stand out, riding as he was in the company of Lords and Princes, and the thought of being looked at by so many strangers became increasingly alarming. He glanced sideways at Dysart, smiling and waving, responding to something in that shouting welcome that Heriot just could not recognize. But, after all, this was Dysart’s city. This was Dysart’s home. All the same, after a little while, Heriot felt the city reaching greedily toward him, embracing him.
Mine!
The city of Diamond was telling him, in a voice both passionless and possessive,
Now you are mine!
Then it fell away to cleave and divide before him, unrolling its tangle of streets, and then, having declared its power over him, seeming to lose interest in his progress.

It was the names and mottoes on the wagons and carts that most distracted Heriot. It seemed as if the city was constantly sending messages into the world.
LOVE ME; I’M YOURS,
said one.
DEATH OR GLORY,
said another.
BEWARE THE DEMONS OF THE NIGHT!
warned a third. Quick, painted words flew by, often before he had a chance to catch them, so he gave up trying with something like relief.

On they went, then on again, past taverns, past crowds of people waiting by a bakehouse for their bread and roasts to be given back to them, past open drains, past stalls that sold little sausages and pies, reminding Heriot that he was
ravenously hungry. On one street corner men, setting dogs to fight, suddenly straightened, stared, and cheered. Other men and boys, furiously kicking a stuffed leather ball, leaped back as the first guards advanced before they, too, began waving and cheering.

The procession of the returning King came toward the second wall of the city, an inner wall, yet almost as well defended as the outer one. They passed through huge gates into the Second Ring of Diamond, emerging into wider spaces and rather emptier streets… streets where banks and business halls pushed ahead of ranks of houses. There was a crowd here, too—but a different crowd, a better-dressed crowd, less jostling and noisy. Many were on horseback. All the same they, too, gave way before the guards, flung up their arms, and cheered, just as the poorer people of the Third Ring had done, for the King’s victory belonged to everyone. The King raised his right hand in a calm, remote fashion; Prince Luce and Prince Dysart waved back with pleasure; but Betony Hoad, the oldest Prince and the King’s heir, barely acknowledged the applause. Sometimes Heriot, looking over his horse’s ears, could see Betony Hoad inclining his head as if agreeing with some secret proposition… some unvoiced argument. But he didn’t wave, and Heriot, who could only see his back, knew his smiles would be tight and frosty. Luce, the second Prince, flung his arms wide, and Heriot knew he would be smiling widely. Betony Hoad didn’t want to be part of this occasion, even though it was a celebration of Hoad, and Hoad was part of his name. Luce was rejoicing in the glory of it all, making himself part of the glory,
and Heriot suddenly knew that in his own mind Luce
was
the glory. It was certainly what he wanted to be.

And then at last they came to a third wall—the innermost wall, its stone cloaked in ivy—and there before them, filling the whole view, were the towers of Guard-on-the-Rock, rising above its own gardens, orchards, and lawns, looking over them remotely, as if they did not exist.

“Home!” said Dysart. “My home, anyway. Yours, too, from now on.”

“Not mine,” said Heriot. “Not ever!” And then he added, “But it looks a good enough stopping-off place.”

Dysart laughed. “Yours, too,” he repeated with emphasis. “Wait and see!”

Heriot heard the clang of the great gates closing behind him.

After a few scrambling days, Heriot was transformed. When he was led past mirrors, he looked sideways and didn’t recognize his passing image, though it wore his face and hair. It was made grand by new clothes—by black and gold, velvet and silk. Silver glasses sat on his nose, correcting his uneven sight; threads of gold were plaited into the single braid he preferred these days.

Within a few days he found himself seated at the right hand of the King, with the expectation that he would read the minds of those men bowing below him, something that was often easy to do, for even their most secret thoughts seemed to reject their own secrecy and leap toward Heriot, as if he (and only he) could give them the recognition they most desired. The thinkers of those secret thoughts didn’t always speak the language of Hoad and needed translators, but for the most part, Heriot had no trouble reading them, for thoughts expressed themselves in a language beyond all others, often at variance with the words coming so swiftly out of the more formal and controlled mouths. Some
councilor from the Dannorad would assure the King of friendship and cooperation.
But I am a trick,
the statement would say, flying into Heriot’s head.
I am more than a trick. I am a lie.
Then he would look up and meet the eyes of the liar, who would regularly hasten to adjust what he had just said, trying to change it into some half truth, laughing a little nervously.
Of course it’s not as simple as that, Your Majesty. We have nothing but good intentions toward Hoad, but of course we do have aims of our own that must be acknowledged
.… and so on and so on. Often Heriot would meet the eyes of some messenger and see them filled with hatred, would feel mad cats of hostility striking in at him, claws unsheathed, but he quickly learned to protect himself.

All the same, to himself he was no longer a complete self. Part of him was being endlessly devoured by the city. His days belonged to the King, as he sat performing his strange function at the King’s elbow, reading treacheries and envies out of the court around him, just as the King’s vanished Magician, Izachel, had once done.

He also found himself able to arrange strange illusions and astonishing entertainments for the royal court, and the King was pleased with him. Lord Glass praised him. And then, of course, there was Prince Dysart. Linked as they were by the memory of those early dream days when he had sat on the wide windowsill of Guard-on-the-Rock, staring into the Prince’s bedroom, saying, “Know me! I know you!”… linked also by the curious moment when, to his own astonishment, he had somehow dissolved the Prince under the hooves of galloping horses and then reassembled him, though he was still unsure how he had done that.
They had a strange friendship. Heriot needed Dysart as a sort of brother in Guard-on-the-Rock… as a family. And Dysart needed Heriot if he was ever to grow beyond being the mad Prince.

Dysart’s behavior was now calm and rational, but his madness was still remembered. It had been strange beyond any other sort of strangeness, and had become one of the stories that wound through all the Rings of Diamond and out into the world beyond. Dysart now had Heriot as a friend, and underlying that friendship was the memory of their shared childhood dreams… of Dysart looking out of his bedroom window and locking gazes with Heriot, sitting on the window ledge looking in. Heriot knew he was valued—more than valued. Where Dysart was concerned, he had become a necessity.

When he wasn’t sitting beside the King, he went with Dysart and other noble boys to a series of studies—accounts of the bewildering history of Hoad, of its victories, its defeats, its adjustments and readjustments. Once the ruler had been a single King, but then Cassio, the Hero of the time, had become so revered, so loved by the people, it became necessary to give him equal honor with the King. Since then Heroes had ruled over their small island kingdom; and the Hero sat, like a glorious twin, beside the King on all grand occasions and whenever the policies of Hoad were being formed. But there was one great difference between King and Hero, for Heroes were not allowed to marry or have children, in case the children of the Hero should try wrenching the Kingdom of Hoad from the children of the King.

“It works,” Dysart told Heriot.

“It mightn’t work forever,” Heriot said. “What if the Hero wants to marry and have a family? That’s what most men want to do.”

“The Heroes want to be the equals of the Kings,” Dysart replied. “The power to rule Hoad, that’s what they want to share. Betony Hoad will be King one day, so Luce practices to be the Hero. He wants to be equal in power to Betony when the time comes. Mind you, my father wants him to marry, so I suppose he will.”