The Scar (29 page)

Recently, Toria caught herself thinking about Egert Soll far too often. She believed that thinking about him was unseemly, but avoiding the thoughts turned out to be impossible: he had greatly confounded her that night in the library. He had stunned her not so much by his ability to sense pain as by his admission of his own guilt, an admission that was inconceivable, in her estimation, from the mouth of a murderer. Without being completely aware of it, she now wanted to see him again and examine him more attentively: Did he really grasp his own baseness? Or was it nothing more than a trick, a pathetic attempt to arouse sympathy and obtain a reduction of his sentence?

“Return the basket, please,” she said coolly. There were no other words that would come to her tongue at that moment.

Egert obediently handed her goods back to her. The green tips of a magnificent bunch of scallions swayed, hanging over the edge of the basket; the neck of a wine bottle and a hard, round piece of golden yellow cheese peeked out from under the thicket of scallions.

Grasping the basket by its rounded handle, Toria walked farther along the corridor. The load pulled down her shoulder, and in order to keep her balance she had to compensate by throwing her free arm out to the side.

She had just made it to the corner when behind her she heard a hoarse, uncertain voice. “May I … help?”

She slowed to a stop. Over her shoulder, without turning, she said, “What?”

Egert repeated himself dispiritedly, already anticipating her refusal. “May I help? That’s got to be heavy.”

Toria stood for a second in confusion; her usual asperity sprang to the tip of her tongue, but she did not let it loose. She suddenly recalled that heavy book, smashing away at the pale, drawn face, at the scarred cheek, at the bloodstained lips. Then her heart, as well as her arm, began to ache, as if she had kicked a homeless dog for no reason at all.

“You may help me,” she said with ostentatious indifference.

Egert did not immediately understand, and understanding, he did not immediately approach her: it was as if he was afraid that she would strike him again. Toria frowned peevishly and looked away.

The basket again changed hands. In silent procession they both walked on, Toria in front and Egert behind. Without a single word they traveled through the courtyard to the household annex. In the deserted kitchen Toria took the basket with a regal gesture and set it on the table.

It was high time for Egert to turn around and leave, but he tarried. Was he waiting, perhaps, for her to thank him?

“Thank you.” Toria let the words tumble out of her mouth. Egert sighed and she, without planning it, suddenly asked, “Before, you didn’t ever feel others’ pain, did you?”

Egert said nothing.

“And it is true,” Toria explained to herself, “that if you had felt it, then you could not have thrust your sword into another living man, yes?”

She immediately regretted her words, but Egert only nodded wearily. He affirmed impassively, “I could not have.”

An onion, a bunch of carrots, and a bunch of parsley were extracted from the basket. Egert watched as though spellbound while a poppy seed muffin; sweet, yellow butter; and a pot of cream followed these items into the light of the world.

“And now,” Toria continued relentlessly, “right now, this very second, are you able to feel it?”

“No,” Egert responded dully. “If it happened constantly, I would go out of my mind, and I wouldn’t have to wait for my meeting with the Wanderer.”

“Only a crazy person could want to meet the Wanderer,” snapped Toria, and once again she regretted what she said because Egert suddenly blanched.

“Why?”

Toria was not happy with such a turn in the conversation, and so the fresh cheese, folded in a napkin, was thrown onto the table with a certain amount of temper. “Why? Don’t you know anything about him at all?”

Egert slowly traced his finger along his scar. “This is all I know. Will this knowledge suffice?”

Toria paused, unable to find an answer. Egert looked at her for the first time since encountering her by the entrance: he looked at her without averting his eyes, sorrowfully and a little guiltily, and his gaze bewildered Toria. To hide her confusion, she bit off a piece of the muffin without thinking.

Egert swallowed and averted his gaze. Then, cheered that she could smother her own discomfort, she plucked a white crumb from her lip and asked, “Do you want something to eat?”

She had suddenly remembered that, because he lived in the annex, he was fed only once a day when the good woman, hired to carry dinner, delivered his meal to him. Somewhat disconcerted by this revelation, she hesitated slightly and then handed him a piece of the poppy seed muffin.

“Take it. Eat.”

He shook his head. Looking to the side, he asked, “But you, what do you know about the Wanderer?”

“Take the muffin,” she said adamantly.

For a few seconds he just looked at the rich morsel, dripping heavy crumbs, then he stretched out his hand to take it, and, very briefly, he brushed Toria’s fingers.

They both experienced a momentary awkwardness. With deliberate efficiency, Toria continued to unpack her purchases, and Egert thrust his white teeth into the muffin as soon as he came to his senses.

Toria watched as he ate; demolishing in a second both the inside and the poppy seed-strewn top, he nodded gratefully.

“Thank you. You are … very kind.”

She twitched her lip mockingly: My, what a polite young man.

Egert again looked her right in the eyes. “So you really don’t know anything about the Wanderer?”

Drawing a long kitchen knife from a drawer, she focused on testing it with her finger to see if the edge had dulled. Casually, she asked, “Didn’t you already talk about this with my father? If anyone in the world knows something about your acquaintance, it would be my father, true?”

Egert shrugged his shoulders drearily. “Yes. It’s just that I understand very little of what Dean Luayan says.”

Toria marveled at his candor. She ran the blade of the knife across an ancient, worn grindstone a few times; then, galled at her own complacency, she said, “That’s hardly surprising. You probably wasted all your time in swordplay. I doubt you’ve ever even read a book in its entirety besides a primer.”

She expected him to go pale again or lower his eyes or even run away, but he only nodded wearily, agreeing with her. “That’s true, but what’s to be done about it? Anyway, there is no book that can tell me how to find the Wanderer, how to talk to him … so that he understands.”

Toria pondered this for a bit and then said carelessly, playing with the knife, “And are you really sure that you need to find him? Are you convinced that without the scar you will become better?”

Only now did Egert lower his head; instead of his face, she saw a pile of disordered blond hair. For a long time there was no answer. When he did speak, he directed his words at the floor. “Believe me, I very much need to find him. There is no getting around it: I must either be freed from the curse or I must die. Do you understand?”

Quiet set in and lasted for so long that the fresh bunch of parsley, sitting in a patch of sun on the table, began to wither. Toria shifted her gaze from Egert’s lowered face to the sunny day beyond the window, and it was clear to her, as clear as the day, that the man standing in front of her was not lying, not being overly dramatic, not acting: he really would prefer to die if the curse of the scar were not broken.

“The Wanderer,” she began softly, “appears on the Day of Jubilation. No one knows his paths or his roads; it is said that he can cover inconceivable distances in the space of a day. But on the Day of Jubilation he comes here. As to why, well, fifteen years ago on the same day in the square—from this window you can’t see it—but there, in the square, in front of the courthouse, a scaffold was erected. The town magistrate had decided that, as a prelude to the merrymaking, an execution would be performed and that it would forever be associated with the beginning of the festival. They sentenced some stranger, a vagrant, for the unlawful misappropriation of the rank and title of mage.”

“What?” asked Egert reluctantly.

“He claimed to be a mage, but he was not a mage. The law forbidding that is ancient and obscure. He was sentenced to be beheaded. People gathered, thick on the ground, excited by the prospect of fireworks, carnival, a man sentenced to the block.… The executioner lifted his ax, but the condemned man surged up and disappeared right in front of the whole city. It was as if he never even existed. No one knows precisely how this happened. Perhaps he was a mage after all. It was not the Spirit Lash that saved him, as some people say.”

Egert winced at the mention of Lash, but Toria did not notice.

“From that time until now the Day of Jubilation has begun with an execution, but one of the condemned men is pardoned by lottery. They draw lots right there on the scaffold, and one is released while the others, well, they get the usual fate of the condemned. Then, Egert, there is a citywide celebration, and everyone rejoices.”

She realized that, carried away by her tale, she had called him by his first name. She frowned.

“What can you do? Heathen customs die hard. You would probably be interested in seeing an execution, yes?”

Egert averted his eyes. With barely noticeable reproof he said, “Hardly. Especially if my ability returned, as I imagine it would. So, I think not.”

Toria lowered her eyes, a bit disconcerted. She muttered through her teeth, “I don’t know why I am telling you all this. Father is of the opinion that the Wanderer has a connection to the man who so abruptly disappeared right out from under the ax. He believes that both before this and after, the man experienced considerable ordeals, and a change came over him. All this is, of course, extremely vague, but in my opinion my father thinks that he and the Wanderer are one and the same man.”

Again a long pause followed. Toria pensively scored the surface of the table with the tip of the knife.

“So every year,” slowly continued Egert, “he comes here. On that very same day?”

Toria shrugged her shoulders. “No one knows what interests the Wanderer, Soll.” She cast a glance at her companion and suddenly added with uncanny boldness, “But I think that you would interest him very little.”

With a habitual gesture, Egert touched his scar. “Well, that just means that I have to find a way to interest him.”

*   *   *

On the evening of that same day, Dean Luayan dropped in on Egert.

Twilight reigned in the small room. Egert was sitting by the window, the book on curses lay open beside him on the windowsill, but Egert was not reading. Staring at the courtyard with unresponsive, wide-open eyes, he saw in his mind’s eye first the square, where a scaffold was swelling upward like an island in the midst of a sea of humanity; then the thoughtful eyes of Toria; then the kitchen knife, cleaving through a stalk of parsley; then finally the ax, cleaving through a man’s neck. A recollection of the dean’s ambiguous story about the mage deprived of his magical gift came to his mind; then his thoughts turned to the Order of Lash, and the Sacred Spirit broke in upon his thoughts, resembling its own sculpted image the way two drops of water resemble each other: shrouded in its robe, it descended onto the scaffold and saved the doomed man from the block.

At that moment a knock came at the door. Egert shivered and tried to convince himself that in fact there had been no knock, but the rusty hinges screeched and the dean was standing on the threshold.

In the gathering darkness Egert could not have traced the pattern of lines on his own palm, but the face of the dean, which was several steps away, was plainly visible: that face, as usual, was a paragon of passionless detachment.

Egert leapt up as if the mouth of a volcano were under him instead of just a rickety chair. The appearance of the dean here, in this wretched little room, which Egert had grown accustomed to thinking of as his home, seemed an occurrence equally as unthinkable as a visit from the moon to the nest of a wagtail.

The dean looked at Egert inquiringly, as if Egert had come to see him and was about to tell him something. Egert was silent, having been deprived of the gift of speech as soon as the dean entered.

“I beg your pardon,” the dean said somewhat sarcastically, and Egert thought in passing that Toria was strikingly similar to her father, not so much in appearance as in habits. “I beg your pardon for barging in on you, Soll. At our last meeting you said that you were ready to quit the university and that you were motivated to do so in part because of your, hmm, uselessness … that is, your ignorance. Did you say this seriously or was it just a pretty turn of phrase?”

The darkened, arched ceiling came down and crushed Egert’s shoulders. He was being turned out, and they had every right to turn him out. “Yes,” he said dully. “I am ready to leave. I understand.”

For a short time they were both silent, the dean dispassionately, Egert anxiously; finally, unable to endure the silence any longer, Egert muttered, “I truly am useless, Dean Luayan. Studying for me is like an ant taking on the heavens. Maybe it would be best to give my place to another?”

He suddenly broke into a sweat. He was horrified at his own words: his place already belonged to another. It was Dinar’s place.

The dean rubbed his temple, and his wide sleeve swayed. “Well, Soll. There is nothing wrong with your reason: you usually speak sensibly. Your academic work does, however, leave something to be desired. Even though you are an auditor, you should not neglect your studies. And so, I’ve brought you this.” Luayan took a medium-sized tome in a leather binding and a smallish pamphlet bound in pasteboard from the folds of his dark garment.

“I asked Toria to select something relatively straightforward for the beginning. Fortunately, you do know how to read. When you have got through this one, turn to the other. And don’t be shy about speaking up if something is too difficult for you. Perhaps Toria might take a shot at tutoring you … though perhaps not. Sometimes it seems to me that she has no patience at all.”