The Magician of Hoad (14 page)

Until the expedition to the edge of the battlefield, Linnet had always had her mother’s full attention, but suddenly all that warm concentration shifted and focused passionately on someone else… a child forming inside her. She acted as if she were trying to create a son through concentration… by some perfect act of will. She performed ancient rituals
and even invented spells, anxious not to miss out on any right magic, no matter how accidental, that might allow her to bear the Master the male heir he had always longed for. Her love for Linnet was still there, but it became more and more distracted.

Meanwhile traders, selling precious glass and woolen cloth and buying hides, furs, and fire opals, brought stories from Diamond… stories of Luce, who had left the city to fight under the command of Carlyon the Hero on fretful borders in County Doro; of Betony Hoad’s perpetual arguments with his father; or even stories of Dysart, the younger Prince, the lesser one—the unexpected one.

And suddenly it seemed, according to the gossip, as if Dysart himself had nothing better to do with his life than to fling it away. One morning he had been seen leaping and scrambling along the walls of Guard-on-the-Rock, dancing on edges hundreds of feet above the river. Cornered, at last, by the King’s guards, he had listened to Dr. Feo’s appeals, laughed, and then flung himself, arms wide, into space, plunging eagerly toward death. But, incredibly, the river caught him, cradled him safely, and swept him on to a wharf in the mazy, active port beyond the castle. There he had hauled himself out, still laughing and apparently joyous, to sit on stone steps, dripping and drying in the sun. But this was, perhaps, his last mad adventure. From then on, stories suggested, he had quieted down. Gossip also suggested he had become a friend of that weird, magical boy who had replaced the vanished Izachel at the King’s court and become the Magician of Hoad. There was no way secrets could be kept from the King when his new Magician
was sitting at his elbow, and the magical displays at the King’s banquets spread overwhelming enchantment over everyone who saw them in the King’s Hall.

These stories of Guard-on-the-Rock, a castle she had never seen, distracted Linnet, particularly when her own home was filled with the sense of hard, cold waiting. The baby was born at last, and it was indeed a boy, but he died and Linnet’s mother died with him.

Linnet imagined that from now on she and her father would stand back to back, facing outward against both the Dannorad and Hoad, protecting Hagen and each other, too. But her father was negotiating a new marriage before the end of the year, and his second wife, the daughter of a Dannorad Duke, was the same shy girl Dysart had once pointed out to her.

Linnet refused to bend. No matter how her father threatened, Linnet would not sit sewing at her stepmother’s elbow or listen meekly as the newcomer gave instructions in a soft but determined voice to the stewards of the castle (
My castle!
Linnet would be thinking.
Mine, not yours!
). Shouting and swearing aloud, she would break away, run down stair after stair to the stable, saddle her horse, and ride out across the tilted plains of the plateau, yelling at the sky, consumed by thrilling rage, until she was hidden by forests where the prevailing winds bent all growing things to the north, so that whole hillsides seemed to be paying some sort of deference to Hoad. Even with everything pointing the one way, it was still possible to get lost in the forests of Hagen. Paths were soon stippled out by layers of tiny, round leaves or by a deep cross-hatching of needles. Among the trees lay
hundreds of small lakes gouged out by retreating glaciers, milky, blue-green eyes staring steadily upward or, depending on the season, dreaming under lids of ice.

Linnet crouched, shivering and looking deeply into these eyes, waiting for a revelation that never came, until cold drove her home to her father’s rages and, sometimes, to a beating. But by then, disobedience seemed the only way to get his full attention. She was glad he found her difficult, and yelled back, reminding him that Hoad was not happy with a Dannorad marriage, particularly as there had been times over the last two hundred years when Hagen had struggled under false masters—all Dannorad men.

And now, from time to time, alone in her room, Linnet studied herself in the glass, willing her freckles to fade or fall off, leaving her skin pale and pure, or wishing her hair might fall in golden waves rather than standing out around her face like a rusty bush. But her freckles and her hair persisted. It was her treacherous body that began changing. “Don’t change,” she commanded her reflection. “You changed before I did,” her reflection reminded her. “You’re the first traitor.”

Standing in front of the polished glass, Linnet remembered Luce with his first and last unwilling smile; she remembered Carlyon of Doro, and then, abruptly and deliberately, she made herself think of Dysart. He leaped up obediently in her head every time she called him, arms outspread, offering to embrace the galloping horses, yet smiling sideways at her. Something inside her tightened, then melted, and that strange, thrilling spasm dismayed yet fascinated her. She invoked him over and over again…
turning and smiling… turning and smiling… a puppet of her will. Was he drawing power from his new friend, turning himself from a mad Prince to a clever one? Was he so obsessed with the Magician that he had forgotten her? Then she would shrug. It was all such a long time ago—years ago now, five years. She was seventeen… well, almost seventeen. And she was the heir to Hagen.

But then one day, after yet another fight, her father looked at her mildly, speaking in a voice that was almost loving again.

“Linnet, my dear girl, life is too difficult for us all. You need a new father, one who can do the right things for you.”

“You’re the only father I can ever have,” she said, far more frightened by his suddenly kind voice than she had ever been by his angry one.

Her father’s reply was not a true one. It was a ceremonial formula.

“The King is father to the children of Hoad. I’m sending you to Diamond. It’s time for you to go. You’re too rough, Linnet. Too wild! But in Diamond you’ll be one of the ladies who attend the old Queen… you’ll make friends… have the best tutors… you’ll have more chances to read there than you have here.”

“You’ll learn to be a lady,” said Shuba, Linnet’s stepmother, sewing in a corner. The Master glanced over at her, and Linnet suddenly understood that certain kinds of love could make every previous love irrelevant. She understood something else, too.

“Is it because you’ve married into the Dannorad?”
she blurted out. “Are you sending me there to make the King feel safer about you and her? I’ll be like a hostage, won’t I?”

Her father looked away, frowning. “There’s no point in arguing,” he said. “You’ve made life impossible for us all. You know you have.” Then he added, “Shuba is going to have a baby, and I don’t want her troubled.”

“Hagen is
mine
,” Linnet whispered. Her words could not have been heard on the other side of the room, but the Master read her expression.

“I do want to have a son, yes!” he exclaimed. “I want my land to have a true Master. Is that so terrible? As for you, dear girl, I want to protect you. Women are destroyed by ruling!” He looked into her eyes. “We’re going to Diamond, and that’s my final word.”

I
F THE WOLF IS NOT BEHIND YOU, HE IS BESIDE YOU.
Heriot read these words, painted carelessly on a blank wall, as he ran, twisting wildly through the crowds of the Second Ring—crowds who largely ignored him. The street boy Heriot was chasing turned as he ran, clenched his fist, and shook it once in a gesture of triumph. His sharp features broke into that brilliant smile, and there among the indifferent, jostling crowd, he suddenly danced—danced a few steps with astonishing grace and elegance.

“Well, what about that, then,” Heriot said rather blankly, continuing to stare at that familiar—that impossibly familiar—face, marked on its skin and around its eyes with the infections prevalent in the Third Ring. “Hey! Who are you? What’s your name?”

“No name,” the boy replied, shaking his filthy hair, which was, under the dirt, the color of honey and butter melted together. “No name, no history.”

“Come on, you’ve got a name,” Heriot said. “Don’t get clever with me. I could read you like a book if I wanted to.”
He was astounded to hear himself adding this, like one child boasting to another.

“Some can read,” the boy agreed, looking interested. “Not me. Do you have one?

“One what?” Heriot asked. “Oh, a name. Yes, I’ve got a name. Heriot.” His occupant moved in him, unexpectedly insisting that the gift of their shared name was only half of what was needed.

This is the one,
the occupant was saying.
This is the one.
Over and over again. Heriot shook his head, trying to shift things into an understandable order.

“What’s your name?” he insisted.

“I’m called Rat, mostly,” the child admitted, “but my name’s Cayley, which is my first name littled down. Before that it was grand and noble, all that, but it’s nothing but a stump now, shrunk to nothing. Just do this, do that, bring this, carry that, stand up for me, lie down for me. Give me! Get me!” His voice sounded hoarse, as if one of the city coughs had him in its grip. He laughed softly to himself, though nothing in his rapid babble sounded funny to Heriot. The boy looked desperately pale, as if he were the victim of some shocking illness, yet for all that, he gave off such exuberance that there was no feeling of death in him. Around his neck was wound and rewound a man’s sash, once beautiful, now shredding away, its embroidered butterflies unraveling in threads of blue and scarlet and gold.

“Where’s your home?” Heriot asked, knowing as he asked that it was a stupid question. He was rewarded with the wild smile once more.

“Home? Me? Everywhere! Nowhere!” said Cayley, and laughed again. “No home for me, only hidey-holes!”

“Where do you hide, then?” Heriot asked, determined to pin the boy down.

“Wherever I tumble,” Cayley said. “I flatten out and no one sees me. It’s all city land, ’n’t it, and me”—he flung his arms wide—“rats
are
the city, right? I know all the ways in and the ways out. I know its hidey-holes more than most. This city wants me dead, but me—burn it all up! I stay alive.” He started to trot away, looked back, and jerked his head. “Come on.”

Heriot moved after him. It was impossible to be sure of the age of such a wolfish child, so battered, so desperately thin, but Heriot guessed he might be twelve or thirteen. His teeth were astonishingly good for a Third Ring child, which added to his predatory appearance; the irises of his weeping eyes were deep blue, set around in scarlet inflammation.

“You going into the First Ring?” Cayley asked.

“I am,” Heriot said.

“I’ll come with you,” the boy announced. “You’re strange, and I fancy strange company. And you feel like a sort of good luck. And me—I need good luck. Always I need it. Over and over again! If I don’t get it free, I have to steal it.”

“They won’t let you through the gates… not unless you know the passwords,” Heriot said.

“Passwords!” exclaimed the boy derisively. “Likely
you
have to know passwords. But me, I don’t need those. I’ve got my cleverness. All ways open up to me.”

Heriot smiled, moving on. The boy came too, not so
much walking beside him as dancing around him, singing a little under his breath. The stolen oranges bounced like impossible breasts under his dirty shirt.

An evening bird sang somewhere. Just for a moment it was almost, thought Heriot, as if he were back in the country again. The gates between the Second and First Rings came into sight… a distant barrier at the end of the road they were on, but Cayley grabbed Heriot’s arm.

“This way,” he cried. “Sideways! I know where to go.”

Heriot hesitated, then turned sideways and followed obediently, increasingly fascinated by this dancing, smiling ruin of a child. Walking through the Second Ring, he felt unconsciously sure he could glide into any of the heads bobbing past him on those crowded streets. He had always been unconsciously sure he could invade their thoughts and dreams any time he wanted. But he could feel the boy Cayley was somehow defended against his powers, and, paradoxically, this tempted him to try an invasion. He half tried, and came up against a barrier of a kind he had never encountered. Until then every mind he had tested had opened to him to some extent. Every head had its secrets, and though Heriot shrank from intruding on secrets, he knew they were there. But this child presented him with blank obstruction.

By now they were up against a section of the city wall that divided the First Ring from the Second.
He’ll have to stop now,
thought Heriot, yet the boy slid in under the ivy that grew over this part of the wall, just as if he were slipping behind a familiar curtain. Heriot hesitated, then felt his way in after him.

At first he could see nothing in the dark green dusk but twisting stems and the undersides of crowding leaves. Then, as he became used to what dim light there was, he made out a dark oblong, put out a hand to touch it, and found he was touching nothing but space.

“I’ll never get through,” he said, speaking to the vanishing head and shoulders of Cayley.

“Try,” said Cayley, his voice coming back in a muffled command. “Breathe in! Pull yourself down into yourself.”

Heriot tried, angling his wide shoulders. He breathed in. Pushing himself, half-sideways, into this narrow slot, he inched his way forward, stopped to gasp, then wriggled on yet again. Slowly, slowly he groped his way into yet another curtain of ivy; dived down under it, twisting as he went; and broke out into the evening, only to find himself once more rolling on the grass in one of the sprawling outposts of the orchard he had left hours earlier, with the towers of Guard-on-the-Rock looking down at him through the branches of apple trees.

Heriot scrambled to his feet.

“This way!” said Cayley. “Slink along!” So they slunk through trees, which were reaching out to the breeze and beginning an illusory dance of their own. The trunks seemed to change places, curving their branching arms toward the sky. Cayley, trotting a little ahead, was so flecked with evening light he sometimes seemed to break up and vanish into the dappling of the very last sunlight and advancing shade, flashing in and out of existence.