I had to press my ear hard against the door to hear the answer. “I went to him. It took the best part of my strength, but I went to him in his own house. He did not expect me. We came to no agreement, and he tried to prevent my leaving. I left all the same.” Lukassa must have been close on the other side, for I could smell her new-bread sweetness as I knelt there. The old man mumbled on. “I fled back to the red tower and reinforced it against him as best I knew how. He followed, first in the spirit, with sendings that now strode through my counterspells like wind through spiderwebs—then in the body.” I lost some words when a sudden coughing fit took him, and only made out, “The rest you know. Or Lukassa knows.”
I must have caught something of the black woman’s taut wariness: anyway, I found myself turning often to look over my shoulder for whoever she had been so certain of seeing on the stair. I heard her voice, plainly angry herself now, saying, “At least we knew you well enough to follow a trail of nightmares that had you trapped howling in the arms of burning lovers, falling forever through razory emptiness, running and running from striding flowers that cried after you like babies. Were those the dreams he sent you, your son?”
Right back at her he came—no more coughing or muttering, but quick and clear as a slash of lightning. “They were not dreams. They are not dreams. Have you not understood that yet? What woke you, what brought you here—it has all happened to me, exactly as you saw it. And those were the least of them.” A small, sudden chuckle. “Do you imagine that a few indigestible dreams did this to me?”
A rustle of blankets, cloth, something. A woman cried out. I knew it was Lukassa—it was the sound she would have made if the river had given her time to call my name. I know this. I jumped up to hammer on the door, never mind what I had sworn to myself not an hour before. Something touched my shoulder, very lightly, and I turned to see what it was.
NYATENERI
And having shown us exactly what had been done to him in those dreams of ours, he decided that he was hungry after all, and bent his energies loudly to the bread and soup. After a time, I heard the scrape of my own voice. “Lukassa told us about the Others.”
“Then I have no need to,” he answered with his mouth full, indistinct but scornful. “Arshadin made the mistake of not trusting his own power. He took his mind off me just long enough to call for the help he thought he needed. That will not happen again.” He gave that new faraway chuckle that sounded like something small and frightened stirring in dry grass.
I said, “Lukassa says that the Others killed Arshadin, and that he came back to life again. Isn’t that what you told us, Lukassa?”
She looked up at him, gone mute and useless, hardly hearing me at all. He wiped his mouth and shrugged. “Since I took that one moment of his inattention to escape, it is hard for me to say what did or did not happen. There was a good deal of confusion.” He met my eyes guilelessly, knowing that I’d not give him the lie with an army at my back. “What I can tell you is that I have been fleeing him ever since, never going to ground anywhere, nor daring to contact you for fear of betraying my presence to him. As I will, sooner or later, if I have not already done so by summoning your fox friend, Nyateneri. But I was very weary.“
I had to speak briskly, to keep from thinking about what we had seen beneath the rags of his shirt. I said, “Tell us where his castle lies. We will set out in the morning, Lal and I.”
If he had been as dead as we had feared for so long, I think he would have risen at my words. He sat up so violently that the last of the soup spilled down his front. “You will do nothing of the kind! I forbid it utterly! Do you understand? Answer me, both of you—I want to hear you swear it. Answer me!”
Behind me, Lal burst out laughing. A moment of absolute astonishment—she treats that man as though he were made of moonlight, and there she was, doubling over herself until she had to sit down on the floor—and then there was nothing in the world for me to do but lean against the wall and pound on it to make the room shake. I imagine that must be part of that song about poor Karsh—“the ceiling shook and the plaster flew.” Poor Karsh. I certainly never said that before.
The old man took no notice of our impudence, nor of Lukassa trying to clean up the soup with the last of the bread, but kept shouting at us, “This is not for you! Arshadin is no river pirate, no two-horse, forty-acre baron with a stone barn full of staggering louts to do his bidding while the drink holds out. He lives alone in a house so plain you’d pass it by for a woodcutter’s hutch, and fifty like you could no more break into it than you could leave this room if I chose to keep you here, shadow and candle-end that I am. Understand me, Soukyan!” and he actually seized my arm—not lightly, either. “This is wizards’ business, and none of yours! You cannot help me, not in that way. Leave Arshadin to me. Do you hear me?”
Lal was still giggling. I sat down by him, crowding him until he shifted on the mattress to make room. I said,
“This is like one of those rhyming puzzles you used to set me—Lal, too, I suppose—and then forbid me to come back to you without the answer. Like learning to make the tea you wouldn’t drink. I thought those were all special magic exercises, just as important as archery practice, meant to show me the sinews of the universe in a drop of water. In time I came to realize that you gave them to me, not to widen my understanding, not to teach me a single thing, but only when you wanted a little time to yourself, and for no other reason. So what I learned from those riddles was not always to pay attention to you. It was a most practical lesson. I have never forgotten it.”
For the first and only time since I have known him, my Man Who Laughs could do nothing but splutter, briefly but totally speechless with outrage. I patted his leg. “There,” I said. “We are not the children you knew, and we were never fools. And we know something anyway about dealing with wizards. Tell us where Arshadin lives.”
He sulked. There is no other word for it. He folded his arms and sank back against the pillows, staring somewhere past us. Once again, Lal and I began speaking at the same time. Lal concerned herself with assuring him that we would track down Arshadin with his help or without it, but that it would be a good thing to find him before he found us. I had a number of things to say about stubborn, arrogant, ungrateful old men, and I said them all. Neither approach made the slightest difference, as both of us could have predicted. He simply closed his eyes.
Then Lukassa spoke. Since we came into the room, she had done nothing but make over him, uttering no sounds—once she stopped weeping—distinguishable from the sigh of blankets or the soothing murmur of soup. Even I had almost forgotten she was there, and I was usually very much aware of Lukassa, silent or not. Now she said quite clearly, in that south-country baby-bird voice of hers, “White teeth—white, white teeth. The white teeth of the river.”
From Lal’s expression I knew that, like me, she thought Lukassa must mean the river from which Lal had raised her drowned body. The Man Who Laughs tried out a soft snore, but no one was deceived. Lal said, “That was long ago, Lukassa. There is no river where we are now.”
“In the mountains,” Lukassa said. Her voice was stronger, as fiercely insistent as it had been in the cold, empty tower. “In the mountains he gives the river fine presents to make it sing. The dharises nest on his windows, and the great sheknath fish along the banks below, and the river sings hungry, hungry, please more, please.” She was breathing hard and roughly, as though she had been running.
When we looked back at the Man Who Laughs, his eyes were wide open, still drained pale but bright enough for all of that. I said, “There are things she knows.”
“Obviously,” he said, forcing a yawn. “As I know that outside this door, one of the boys who helped me up the stairs is lying hurt. Not the one who brought the food, my dear Lal”—for she was already across the room—“the other one. Bring him in and see to him, and then we will perhaps talk a bit more about Arshadin. Perhaps.”
ROSSETH
It was well before dawn when they came for their horses, but I was ready and waiting outside the stable, rehearsing once more the logical reasons why they should take me with them wherever they were going. I was certain that Nyateneri would refuse, no matter how well I pleaded, but I did think that I might have some chance with Lal.
As it happened, Lal never let me get my first speech out of my mouth: she took one look at me, perched up between two weeks’ worth of stolen food and several really quite sharp gardening tools on the warm swayback of Tunzi, Karsh’s old horse-of-all-work, and said, “No, Rosseth.” I will always bless her for not laughing, nor even looking startled; but her tone was quietly final, and somehow left no opening for much but spluttering and arm-waving. It was Nyateneri who said mildly, “You did name him our faithful squire, after all. A temporary appointment only?”
I saw the warmth flood from Lal’s throat all the way to her forehead, but she ignored Nyateneri altogether, saying to me, “Rosseth, unpack that poor animal and go back to bed. I have already told you that you cannot come with us. You must stay home.”
“I but obey your orders,” I answered. “Where you are, I am home.” Bold words, but barely audible, as I recall. Lal neither smiled nor frowned to hear them. She said, “Look at me, Rosseth. No, look straight at me, and at Nyateneri, too. Rosseth.”
I did look directly into her eyes, which was effort enough, but it was more than I could manage to meet Nyateneri’s calm glance. It shames me still, a little, to remember how ashamed I was, not of what had happened between us, but of my worshipful dreams of the woman I had taken him to be. I was sixteen, and chuckling little assassins were easier to face than confusion, in that time.
Lal said, “I will tell you where we are bound, and why you cannot come with us. We are on our way up into the mountains to seek out a wizard named Arshadin, who plagues our master with terrible hauntings and visions. When we have explained to him that this is an uncivil way to behave, we will return. In the meanwhile—”
“I can help you,” I broke in on her. “You will need someone to find water in the mountains, to search for paths where the horses can go, to carry packs when the beasts must be rested.” Each argument sounded weaker than the one before, but I plunged ahead anyway. “Someone to make your camp and keep it clean—someone who will wait forever where you tell him to wait. I know how to do these things. I have done them all my life.”
“Yes,” Lal said gently. “But we need you to do them at the inn. Listen to me, Rosseth,” for I had immediately started to protest again. “At this moment, Arshadin is hunting for our master. He is sitting in silence, closing his eyes and hunting for him, do you understand me? Our hope, if we cannot reason with him, is not to fight him— for he is a far greater wizard than we are warriors—but perhaps to divert him, to make him hunt us for a bit, while our master regains his own strength.” She paused, and then added, with a very small smile, “We do not yet know how we will do this.”
“Oh, we certainly do not,” Nyateneri mimicked her. “It took all our wit merely to persuade our master to let us go with his blessing—there was none left over for anything like a plan of action. Find mountain, find river, find wizard, do something.” He sighed and shook his head in mock despair. “It lacks a certain precision.”
Lal ignored him, taking my wrists in her hands. She said, “We need you to guard him while we are gone. It will help us greatly to know that he is safe and warm and not alone.” She would have said more, but I interrupted her, pulling my hands away.
“A nursemaid,” I said. “Be honest with me—I have that much claim on you. A nursemaid to a sick old man, that is all you need.” I am telling you what I said.
Nyateneri’s horse pushed past Lal’s, and Nyateneri gripped me between shoulder and neck with the same hand that had caressed me just there, after I had saved his life and my nose was bleeding. I stood up in my stirrups, prying at his fingers. He said very softly, “Boy. There is a world you do not know. In that world there are wizards and mages who could spread you and me on their morning toast before their eyes were quite open, and truly never realize that we weren’t last year’s ice-flower preserve. And among those vast beings, there is not one who would not cast aside every preoccupation, every pride, every loyalty, on the slightest chance of being allowed to sit by that sick old man’s bed. Think carefully about this, Rosseth, as you change his linen.”
Lal made him let go of my shoulder. I think he was so angry that he had forgotten he was holding me. But I was angry, too—I could not believe the rage that took me over then. As I have said, in those days a show of anger was the greatest luxury I dared imagine allowing myself, and at sixteen, the actual emotion seemed already as rare and unnatural in me as the display. I tried to keep from shaking with it as I answered Nyateneri. I said, “There is Lukassa, who refuses to let your master out of her sight. There is Tikat, who is never so far from Lukassa that he could not hear her call him, if she ever would. There is Marinesha, who knows more about sickness than all three of us put together. What can I do for the old man that they cannot?“
“I said it was a guard we needed,” Lal replied. “In the first place, you must keep Karsh from bothering him. We have paid in advance for the extra room, and for the extra cost of Marinesha bringing him his meals. Karsh has no reason to be anywhere near him. Can you see to that, Rosseth?”
I was slow to answer her, not because what she asked would require any special new skill of me—what had my life been so far but learning to manage Karsh?—but because I was still feeling deeply slighted, and particularly furious at Nyateneri, who seemed to take no notice of what he must have known. He said, “In the second place, Arshadin will certainly find our master here, and sooner rather than later. Whenever it happens, there will be danger to follow, such as your Gaff and Slasher has never known. Given the choice”—he paused—“given the choice, we would rather leave someone on watch whose courage and wit and resourcefulness we have observed for ourselves. No one can help us now as you can, if you will.”
To me then, it was the rawest, most contemptible flattery: surely as much an embarrassment to him as to me. I feel differently now. When I still said nothing, Lal took her turn again. “Rosseth, you must know this, too. Those men Nyateneri killed—there is a third. We think it was he who overcame Tikat outside our door. Without doubt, he will follow us into the mountains and trouble the inn not at all, but you must look out for him even so, as much as for any sign or sendings of Arshadin.” She took hold of my hand, but there was no cozening in her touch or her glance. She was not smiling when she asked, “Do you still believe that we are offering you nursemaid’s duty?”
At the inn, the kitchen door slammed loudly, heedless of sleeping guests. I knew that slam, and I knew that Karsh had come out into the cool mist to stand with his hands on his hips and peer around for me. It would be a moment yet before he started bawling my name. I looked back and forth from one to the other of them, these beautiful strangers who knew they could do what they wanted with me, having so quickly overturned and disjointed my life at The Gaff and Slasher that it might as well have been as much a dream as the song about Byrnarik Bay, where someone was going to take me once. There is no finding a dream again; good or bad, there’s no returning to a dream. I said to them, more carefully than I had ever said anything, “What I believe makes as much difference to you as whoever has my throat in his hands makes to me.” Then I got down from Tunzi’s back and walked him into the stable to unsaddle him. I did not turn, and I did not look up when I heard them finally riding away.
