the wind's twelve quarters (9 page)

They brought Mede out just before noon. Ganil glimpsed his face; it was very white, all his deformity exposed, the atavistic pallor of skin, hair, eyes. There was no drawing-out of the scene; a gold-robed priest raised his crossed arms in invocation to the Sun that stood, unseen, at noon behind the pall of clouds, and as he lowered his arms torches were set to the stacks of wood round the stake. Smoke curled up, the same grey-yellow as the clouds. Ganil stood with his injured hand in its sling pressed hard against the roll of papers under his.cloak, repeating silently, “Let the smoke suffocate him first....” But the wood was dry and caught quickly. He felt the heat on his face, on his fire-scarred temple. Beside him a young priest tried to draw back, could not because of the pressing, staring, sighing crowd, and stood still, swaying a little and breathing in gasps. The smoke was thick now, hiding the flames and the figure among them. But Ganil could hear his voice, not soft now, loud, very loud. He heard it, he forced himself to hear it, but at the same time he listened in his spirit to a steady voice, soft, continuing: “What is the Sun? Why does it cross the sky?... Do you see how I need your numbers?... For XII, write 12.... This is also a figure, the figure for Nothing.”
 

The screaming had stopped, but the soft voice had not.
 

Ganil raised his head. The crowd was drifting away; the young priest knelt on the pavement by him, praying and sobbing aloud. Ganil glanced up at the heavy sky and then set off alone through the streets of the city and out through the city gate, northward, into exile and towards his home.
 

When my daughter Caroline was three she came to me with a small wooden box in her small hands and said, “Guess fwat is in this bockus!” I guessed caterpillars, mice, elephants, etc. She shook her head, smiled an unspeakably eldritch smile, opened the box slightly so that I could just see in, and said: “Darkness.”
 

Hence this story.
 

On soft sand by the sea’s edge a little boy walked leaving no footprints. Gulls cried in the bright sunless sky, trout leaped from the saltless ocean. Far off on the horizon the sea serpent raised himself a moment in seven enormous arches and then, bellowing, sank. The child whistled but the sea serpent, busy hunting whales, did not surface again. The child walked on casting no shadow, leaving no tracks on the sand between the cliffs and the sea. Ahead of him rose a grassy headland on which stood a four-legged hut. As he climbed a path up the cliff the hut skipped about and rubbed its front legs together like a lawyer or a fly; but the hands of the clock inside, which said ten minutes of ten, never moved.
 

“What’s that you’ve got there, Dicky?” asked his mother as she added parsley and a pinch of pepper to the rabbit stew simmering in an alembic.
 

“A box, Mummy.”
 

“Where did you find it?”
 

Mummy’s familiar leaped down from the onion-festooned rafters and, draping itself like a foxfur round her neck, said, “By the sea.”
 

Dicky nodded. “That’s right. The sea washed it up.”
 

“And what’s inside it?”
 

The familiar said nothing, but purred. The witch turned round to look into her son’s round face. “What’s in it?” she repeated.
 

“Darkness.”
 

“Oh? Let’s see.”
 

As she bent down to look the familiar, still purring, shut its eyes. Holding the box against his chest, the little boy very carefully lifted the lid a scant inch.
 

“So it is,” said his mother. “Now put it away, don’t let it get knocked about. I wonder where the key got to. Run wash your hands now. Table, lay!” And while the child worked the heavy pump-handle in the yard and splashed his face and hands, the hut resounded with the clatter of plates and forks materializing.
 

After the meal, while his mother was having her morning nap, Dicky took down the water-bleached, sand-encrusted box from his treasure shelf and set out with it across the dunes, away from the sea. Close at his heels the black familiar followed him, trotting patiently over the sand through the coarse grass, the only shadow he had.
 

At the summit of the pass Prince Rikard turned in the saddle to look back over the plumes and pennants of his army, over the long falling road, to the towered walls of his father’s city. Under the sunless sky it shimmered there on the plain, fragile and shadowless as a pearl. Seeing it so he knew it could never be taken, and his heart sang with pride. He gave his captains the signal for quick march and set spurs to his horse. It reared and broke into a gallop, while his gryphon swooped and screamed
overhead. She teased the white horse, diving straight down at it clashing her beak, swerving aside just in time; the horse, bridleless, would snap furiously at her snaky tail or rear to strike out with silver hoofs. The gryphon would cackle and roar, circle back over the dunes and with a screech and swoop play the trick all over. Afraid she might wear herself out before the battle, Rikard finally leashed her, after which she flew along steadily, purring and chirping, by his side.
 

The sea lay before him; somewhere beneath the cliffs the enemy force his brother led
was hidden. The road wound down growing sandier, the sea appearing to right or left always nearer. Abruptly the road fell away; the white horse leaped the ten-foot drop and galloped out over the beach. As he came out from beneath the dunes Rikard saw a long line of men strung out on the sand, and behind them three black-prowed ships. His own men were scrambling down the drop, swarming over the dunes, blue flags snapping in the sea wind, voices faint against the sound of the sea. Without warning or parley the two forces met, sword to sword and man to man. With a great shrilling scream the gryphon soared up, jerking the leash from Rikard’s hand, then dropped like a falcon, beak and claws extended, down on a tall man in grey, the enemy leader. But the tall man’s sword was drawn. As the iron beak snapped on his shoulder, trying to get the throat, the iron sword jabbed out and up, slashing the gryphon’s belly. She doubled up in air and fell, knocking the man down with the sweep of her great wing, screaming, blackening the sand with blood. The tall man staggered up and slashed off her head and wings, turning half blinded with sand and blood only when Rikard was almost on him. Without a word he turned, lifting his steaming sword to parry Rikard’s blow. He tried to strike at the horse’s legs, but got no chance, for the beast would back and rear and run at him, Rikard’s sword slashing down from above. The tall man’s arms began to grow heavy, his breath came in gasps. Rikard gave no quarter. Once more the tall man raised his sword, lunged, and took the whizzing slash of his brother’s sword straight across his uplifted face. He fell without a word. Brown sand fell over his body in a little shower from the white stallion’s hoofs as Rikard spurred back to the thick of the fight.
 

The attackers fought on doggedly, always fewer of them, and those few being pushed back step by step towards the sea. When only a knot of twenty or so remained they broke, sprinting desperately for the ships, pushing them off chest-deep in the breakers, clambering aboard. Rikard shouted to his men. They came to him across the sand, picking their way among hacked corpses. The badly wounded tried to crawl to him on hands and knees. All that could walk gathered in ranks in a hollow behind the dune on which Rikard stood. Behind him, out on deep water, the three black ships lay motionless, balanced on their oars.
 

Rikard sat down, alone on the dune-top among the rank grass. He bowed his head and put his hands over his face. Near him the white horse stood still as a horse of stone. Below him his men stood silent. Behind him on the beach the tall man, his face obliterated in blood, lay near the body of the gryphon, and the other dead lay staring at the sky where no sun shone.
 

A little gust of wind blew by. Rikard raised his face, which though young was very grim. He signalled his captains, swung up into the saddle, and set off round the dunes and back towards the city at a trot, not waiting to see the black ships steer in to shore where their soldiers could board them, or his own army fill up its ranks and come marching behind him. When the gryphon swooped screaming overhead he raised his arm, grinning at the great creature as she tried to perch on his gloved wrist, flapping her wings and screeching like a tomcat. “You no-good gryphon,” he said, “you hen, go home to your chicken coop!” Insulted, the monster yawped and sailed off eastward towards the city. Behind him his army wound upward through the hills, leaving no track. Behind them the brown sand lay smooth as silk, stainless. The
black ships, sails set, already stood out well to sea. In the prow of the first stood a tall, grim-faced man in grey.
 

Taking an easier road homeward, Rikard passed not far from the four-legged hut on the headland. The witch stood in the doorway, hailing him. He galloped over, and, drawing rein right at the gate of the little yard, he looked at the young witch. She was bright and dark as coals, her black hair whipped in the sea wind. She looked at him, white-armored on a white horse.
 

“Prince,” she said, “you’ll go to battle once too often.”
 

He laughed. “What should I do—let my brother lay siege to the city?”
 

“Yes, let him. No man can take the city.”
 

“I know. But my father the king exiled him, he must not set foot even on our shore. I’m my father’s soldier, I fight as he commands.”
 

The witch looked out to sea, then back to the young man. Her dark face sharpened, nose and chin peaking crone-like, eyes flashing. “Serve and be served,” she said, “rule and be ruled. Your brother chose neither to serve nor rule.... Listen, prince, take care.” Her face warmed again to beauty. “The sea brings presents this morning, the wind blows, the crystals break. Take care.” Gravely he bowed his thanks, then wheeled his horse and was gone, white as a gull over the long curve of the dunes.
 

The witch went back into the hut, glancing about its one room to see that everything was in place: bats, onions, cauldrons, carpets, broom, toad-stones, crystal balls (cracked through), the thin crescent moon hung up on the chimney, the Books, the familiar— She looked again, then hurried out and called “Dicky!”
 

The wind from the west was cold now, bending the coarse grass down.
 

“Dicky!... Kitty, kitty kitty!”
 

The wind caught the voice from her lips, tore it into bits and blew it away.
 

She snapped her fingers. The broom came zooming out the door, horizontal and about two feet off the ground, while the hut shivered and hopped about in excitement. “Shut up!” the witch snapped, and the door obediently slammed. Mounting the broom she took off in a long gliding swoop southwards down the beach, now and then crying out, “Dicky!... Here, kitty, kitty, kitty!”
 

The young prince, rejoining his men, had dismounted to walk with them. As they reached the pass and saw the city below them on the plain, he felt a tug at his cloak.
 

“Prince—”
 

A little boy, so little he was still fat and roundcheeked, stood with a scared look, holding up a battered, sandy box. Beside him a black cat sat smiling broadly. “The sea brought this—it’s for the prince of the land, I know it is—please take it!”
 

“What’s in it?”
 

“Darkness, sir.”
 

Rikard took the box and after a slight hesitation opened it a little, just a crack. “It’s painted black inside,” he said with a hard grin.
 

“No, prince, truly it’s not. Open it wider!” Cautiously Rikard lifted the lid higher, an inch or two, and peered in. Then he shut it quickly, even as the child said, “Don’t let the wind blow it out, prince!”
 

“I shall take this to the king.”
 

“But it’s for you, sir—”
 

“All seagifts are the king’s. But thank you for it, boy.” They looked at each other for a moment, the little round boy and the hard splendid youth; then Rikard turned and strode on, while Dicky wandered back down the hills, silent and disconsolate. He heard his mother’s voice from far away to the south, and tried to answer; but the wind blew his call landwards, and the familiar had disappeared.
 

The bronze gates of the city swung open as the troop approached. Watchdogs bayed, guards stood rigid, the people of the city bowed down as Rikard on his horse
clattered at full gallop up the marble streets to the palace. Entering, he glanced up at the great bronze clock on the bell-tower, the highest of the nine white towers of the palace. The moveless hands said ten minutes of ten.
 

In the Hall of Audience his father awaited him: a fierce grey-haired man crowned with iron, his hands clenched on the heads of iron chimaeras that formed the arms of the throne. Rikard knelt and with bowed head, never looking up, reported the success of his foray. “The Exile was killed, with the greater part of his men; the rest fled in
their ships.”
 

A voice answered like an iron door moving on unused hinges: “Well done, prince.”
 

“I bring you a seagift, Lord.” Still with head bowed, Rikard held up the wooden box.
 

A low snarl came from the throat of one of the carven monsters of the throne.
 

“That is mine,” said the old king so harshly that Rikard glanced up for a second, seeing the teeth of the chimaeras bared and the king’s eyes glittering. “Therefore I bring it to you, Lord.”
 

“That is mine—I gave it to the sea, I myself! And the sea spits back my gift.” A long silence, then the king spoke more softly. “Well, keep it, prince. The sea doesn’t want it, nor do I. It’s in your hands. Keep it— locked. Keep it locked, prince!”