The Scar (15 page)

His mother also came. Egert felt her hand on his forehead, but he could not open his eyelids. Then pain and fear overwhelmed him, and he could not recognize her; he could not recall her face.

The hermit shook his head and shuffled off into the forest, carrying the spade under his arm.

However, as luck would have it, the frosts gave way to warmth and Egert Soll was still alive. One warm spring day, weak as a kitten, he made his way to the door of the hut without any help and raised his face—his wasted face that now seemed to consist only of his eyes and the scar—toward the sun.

The hermit waited a few more days and then, sighing and wiping away sweat, he refilled the vacant grave that had cost him so much labor.

*   *   *

The old wisewoman lived on the outskirts of the tiny hamlet. Egert furtively drew a circle on the path, pressed his left pinkie to his right thumb, and knocked on the gate.

He had been preparing himself for this visit for many days. Time and again the hermit had tried to tell him something, poking at his scar with his finger. Finally, gathering up his courage, Egert set out for the hamlet alone in order to visit the wise woman.

Her courtyard was quiet; it seemed the old woman kept no dogs. A spring wind slowly turned an ungainly weathervane on the roof. The weathervane was a greased wheel with shrunken oddments attached to it, scraps that Egert, upon closer inspection, realized were the skins of frogs.

Finally, Egert heard the shuffling of footsteps. He shivered, but he clenched his teeth and remained where he was.

The gate cracked open with a moan, and a prominent, expressive blue eye, like a glass marble, stared hard at Egert. “Ah, the young stray with the scar.”

The gate swung open wider and Egert, overcoming his diffidence, stepped into the yard.

A thatch-roofed hut stood by the fence; on a chain near it—Egert recoiled—sat a wooden beast covered in tar, with curved fangs peeking out of its half-open jaw. Instead of eyes it had black pits. Walking past, Egert broke out into a sweat because he felt a furtive, observant gaze looming in those pits.

“Come in.”

Egert entered the house, which was congested with an abundance of superfluous items that seemed randomly strewn about. It was a dark and mysterious house, and the walls were covered with two layers of dried herbs.

“Why have you come, young man?”

The old crone looked at him with one round eye. The other was closed, and the eyelid had grown into her cheek. Egert knew that the old woman never worked wicked magic on anyone; quite the opposite: she was well loved in the village for her rare abilities to heal. He knew this, and all the same he trembled before that steadfast, wooden stare.

“Why have you come?” repeated the wise woman.

“I wanted to ask you something.” Egert had to force the words out.

Her eye blinked. “Your fate is crooked.”

“Yes.”

The old woman meditatively wiped her nose, which was snubbed like a girl’s. “We’ll see. Let’s take a look at you.”

Casually stretching out her hand, she took a thick candle from a shelf, lit it by rubbing the wick with her fingers, and though the day was quite bright, brought the flame close to Egert’s face.

Egert braced himself. It seemed to him that instead of warmth, cold emanated from the flame.

“Well, aren’t you just a big bird,” said the old woman pensively. “Your aura is mangled, Egert.”

Egert shivered.

“Your scar,” continued the old woman, as if talking to herself, “is a mark. Now, who would mark you like that?”

She put her eye very close to Egert’s face and suddenly sprang back, her blue eye almost pushing its way out of its socket. “By the frog that enlightens me, by the frog that directs me, by the frog that protects me: Get out, get out!”

And with surprising strength she seized a stupefied Egert by the shoulders and pushed him away. “Out! Go, and don’t return! It is not for me to stand against him; I do not have the strength to tussle with him!”

Before he could come to his senses, Egert was already at the gate. His back crashed into the fence.

“Grandmother! Don’t chase me away! I—”

“I’ll set my dog on you!” snapped the sorceress, and—Glorious Heaven!—the wooden beast slowly turned its tar-covered head.

Egert shot out of the gate like a cork. He would have run away without looking back, but his weakened knees buckled and he sank down into the dust of the road like a sack.

“What am I going to do?” he murmured wearily, turning his face toward a dead beetle lying by the wayside.

The gate screeched again, opening slightly. “Search for a great wizard, an archmage. And never again come to this village, you won’t leave alive!”

And the gate slammed shut with a crash.

PART TWO

Toria

4

Two slanting rays of sunlight fell from the stained glass windows, bathing the stone floor in a cheerful, dappled glow, causing the austere, somber world of the library to be transformed. The sound of voices wafted smoothly from beyond the thick walls; the headmaster’s lecture was just about to begin in the Grand Auditorium. The third window—the one that opened onto the square—had both its shutters flung wide open for the first time since the beginning of winter, and from the square beyond could be heard a noise that was not quite as decorous, but more exuberant: songs and shouts, the patter of hooves and wheels, laughter, the tinkle of bells, and the neighs of horses.

The work was close to finished: the long list was riddled with check marks, and the book cart sagged dolefully under the unbelievable weight of the tomes collected from the shelves. Toria stepped onto the ladder, but instead of going up she suddenly closed her eyes and pressed her face against the warm wood, worn smooth by many centuries of palms.

It was once again spring. Once again, the window cracked open onto the square, and the tart smell of ancient books, so beloved by her, mingled with the scents of dust, grass, and black earth, all warmed by the sun. Soon the river would warm up and strawberries would begin to flower. It was strange and astonishing, but she had the desire to loll about in the grass, to lie there, feeling the trampled stalks with her cheek and gazing about thoughtlessly, like a bee crawling around the velvety interior of a flower; to follow the ants with her eyes as they blazed a path along a stem.…

But Dinar was no more. He had been in the ground for a year already. The ants wandering in the grass now wandered over Dinar. Here the books were piled high, the sun shone beyond the window, boatmen shouted to each other by the river, but Dinar was not anywhere because that deep, black hole in the ground, which she remembered through a fog of horror and disbelief, that pit into which foreign people had lowered a wooden box—was that really Dinar? No, she would never again go to his grave; he was not there, that man, whom they buried. It was not him.

Toria took a faltering breath and opened her eyes. The mottled spots of sunlight had moved closer to the wall; in the corner of one of them sat a white cat, shining with the radiance of the light, mottled and patched like a jester. This cat was the guardian of the library; he protected it from rats and mice. Two round, yellow eyes gazed at Toria with reproach.

Despite herself, she smiled. She tested whether the stepladder was stable, picked up the hem of her dark skirt, and confidently climbed up the rungs, as she had already done a thousand times before.

Her left knee suffered from a blunt, weak ache. A week ago Toria had stumbled on the ladder and fallen, grazing her leg and ripping open her stocking. The elderly serving woman, who came twice a week to clean the annex, had darned the stocking. Whenever she was left alone with Toria, this good woman immediately began to sigh and lift her hands in dismay. “How can it be, you sweet young thing, such a beauty! And already for a year now wearing only one and the same dress! We’ll just have to find some money for a pair of silk stockings … and for a bonnet, and slippers.… A beauty without new clothes, that’s like a jewel without a setting!”

Toria smirked and licked her lips. A solid scar protruded from her lower lip. Then, a year ago, she had bitten it until she bled.

The hum of voices from beyond the wall quieted: undoubtedly the headmaster had mounted the rostrum. Today he would be teaching the students about the remarkable events that occurred, according to scholars, at the edge of the world, at the very Doors of Creation.

Toria grinned again. It was not given to any man to know what really happened at the Doors. As her father said, “Whoever has stood at the threshold can no longer speak to us.”

Well, that’s the last shelf. A thread of dust-laden cobweb waved laboriously over Toria’s head. Spiders were permitted to live under the ceiling; her father joked that after he died, he would become a spider, and he too would guard the library.

Toria looked down intrepidly. She was not at all afraid of heights, so she felt neither agitation nor excitement. She stretched out her hand toward a row of gilded spines, but she changed her mind and turned away from the shelf.

Here, right under the ceiling, was a small, circular window that allowed one to look out from the library into the Auditorium. Toria used to perch here so that, amidst the sea of inclined heads, she might find one: a dark, disheveled, touchingly serious head. It was a game. Dinar was supposed to feel her gaze and raise his eyes to her.

Toria realized that the thought of Dinar no longer summoned an attack of sharp, bitter despair. She remembered him with sorrow, but no longer with that pain, which had for so long filled her days, her nights, and again her days.

Her father had told her that it would be this way. She had not believed him; she could not believe him, but her father had, once again, been right. As always.

Recalling her father, she turned back to the books.

There it was: a massive tome in a simple black binding. The spine seemed warm, and the embossed silver letters gleamed faintly.
On Prophecies.

Goose bumps jumped up all over Toria’s skin: only one copy of this book existed. Many centuries ago, an archmage had dedicated his entire life to this book. Now Toria would take it and bring it to her father; he would write a new chapter in his work, and after several centuries someone else might similarly, reverently take her father’s book from a shelf and learn what the life of Dean Luayan had been dedicated to.

Carefully descending, Toria put the last check on her list; the history of prophecy was set down on the book cart.

So, for today the work was finished. A fresh wind broke in through the window, disturbing the dust of the books and forcing three small sneezes from the guard cat. Toria absentmindedly tucked away a lock of hair that had swept across her forehead and gazed out at the square.

The hot sunlight dazzled her, and the many-voiced hum deafened her. The square spun about like a carousel bedecked in ribbons. The merchants, carrying trays, were calling out their wares; the many-colored parasols of the promenading ladies were weaving through the crowd; and a patrol was passing by, the lead officer of which, in his red uniform with white stripes, deliberately and harshly contracted his brow, shaven according to custom, but at the same time did not stop himself from looking back at any especially lovely flower girl. Street urchins prowled under the feet of the walkers, the buyers and all those rushing people going about their own business, and above the crowd, as majestically as sailing vessels, magnificent sedans borne by lackeys drifted by.

The courthouse, squat and ill favored, seemed like an old toad in the sun’s rays: a withered toad that had crawled out into the light and was warming its wrinkled sides in the sun. Toria, as usual, stole a glance at the round pedestal in front of the iron doors of the court. Two menacing words were emblazoned on the doors,
DREAD JUSTICE!
and on the pedestal there was a small gallows with a stuffed manikin hanging from a noose.

A tower with grated windows soared up next to the courthouse; some guards drowsed by the entrance to the tower, and a bit farther on three men in gray hooded robes were having a dignified conversation: these were the acolytes of the Sacred Spirit Lash. The sky hung above the square like an enormous blue banner.

Toria breathed blissfully; the sun lay on her face like a warm hand. The cat hopped onto the windowsill and sat next to her. Toria rested her hand on the back of its neck, and suddenly felt an unparalleled sense of her own kinship with this square, with this city, with the books, with the cat, with the university. And then she smiled happily, for perhaps the very first time in this last, black year.

The crowd clamored, the crowd bubbled like a motley stew boiling in a cauldron, and Toria’s gaze nonchalantly slid over the hats and the parasols, over the uniforms, the bouquets, the trays of pies, over the dirty faces and the well-groomed ones, over the pomaded hair, the lace, the patches, the spurs until, amidst this hectic mass of humanity, one exceedingly strange man caught her attention.

Toria narrowed her eyes. The man was hidden from her gaze now and again by the crush of people, but this did not stop her from noticing, however far away she was, a certain incongruity in his bearing. It seemed like he was not walking through a populated square, but cautiously moving from hillock to hillock in a bog full of quicksand.

Astonished, Toria watched him even more attentively. The man was moving through a complicated, predetermined route: having made his way to a lamppost, he caught hold of it with his hands and stood against it for a moment, lowering his head as if he were taking a nap. Then, having determined the next leg of his arduous path, he moved on slowly, as if forcing himself.

He was completely uninterested in what was going on around him, even though, judging from his appearance, he was definitely not a sophisticated city-dweller. If anything, he was a vagrant who had worn out the majority of his clothes walking along the country roads. Catching sight of the red-and-white patrol with their swords and spurs caused him to jump so forcefully that he bumped into a seller of baked apples and nearly knocked him to the ground. Toria could hear shouts and abuse coming from the apple seller as the strange tramp jumped yet again, trying to get out of the way.