by Jerry
“Mage?”
He turns away, sets his doves down by the wall, where they coo and rustle within their cage. He straightens again, and takes her by the shoulders. Behind her, in the mirrored hall, she can hear the patter of dancing feet, the strains of the harp, the bard’s sweet baritone voice raised in song. Iron’s hard, and gold is cold. Steel is bright, and silver bold. Emeralds for a lady, and diamonds for a queen, and jeweled masks for thy features, never to be seen . . .
“What is your name?”
It is all drowned out in the chiming of the bells. “I . . .” Her expression shifts to shock and terror. “I do not know. I do not . . .” She stands, braced as though expecting a blow, and looks up at him with her wild eyes wide in her child’s soft face. “I must have a name!”
But the bard’s song is ending, and the magicker is picking up his doves. It is his turn to perform.
Still he pauses, one hand on the curtain, drawn back to permit him to pass, and he turns back to the jester, who stands, still stunned. The light glitters in the facets of the steel rings on that hand. “Yes,” he says, and his voice is level and conversational, as if enquiring after the butter. “I suppose we all must, after all.” And then he walks into the mirrored ballroom, and the curtains fall shut behind him, and the jester is alone.
The masque would persist till sunrise, as is the nature of such revels, but the King retires when the clock strikes three, and the white lord some few moments before him. The jester and the magicker have already made their way up the servant’s stair to their own small room, and there, warmed by a brazier, they wait for the bard. The jester sits perfectly, awesomely still, willing her breath to stop, willing her heart to beat more softly. At last, at last, there is silence: her bells swing, perhaps, but they do not jangle or rustle or tinkle. She sits with her head cocked slightly, as if listening for something. Earlier, she had told the magicker what she had overheard.
And then the chamber door opens, and the bard comes in, and sets his cloth-wrapped harp against the wall. The jester turns her head, and a dozen bells chime sweetly. “Jester,” the bard says, “Is something wrong?”
She shakes her head to an astounding, silvery dissonance. “For a moment,” she says, “just for a moment, I thought I heard someone calling my name.” She sighs and tugs her braid. “I felt that I knew something that I ought to know. But the feeling has passed, now.”
“There is a harp,” the bard says, “Hanging in the throne room.” He settles back, against the wall. “And a sword hanging beside it, among all the trophies and banners.”
The magicker looks up for the first time. “And?”
“And I feel I ought to know them, from somewhere.”
The jester starts, eyes wide as if shocked. “What does it look like?”
“Which? The harp or the sword?”
“The harp!”
The bard sighs, takes a piece of bread with cheese from off a tray. “It is red wood, strung with silver wire.” He shrugs. “It is silver. I cannot touch it, after all.”
She leaps to her feet. “I must see it! I must!”
The bard chews and swallows, but is not slow in getting to his feet. The jester reaches her hand out to the magicker, who declines it and stands on his own, brushing crumbs from his lap as he does. He slides his sword in its scabbard into his belt, and the three exit the door in a single, silent file. The mage watches the back of the jester’s head as she follows the bard down the stairs, and something nags at him, stirred by the sight of her braids. Beneath his skin he feels the shift of power, of magic being cast, but dimly, muffled and distant. Better born with no talent at all, he thinks, than with such a small one. Like the minor poet who knows the meanness of his gift, I am doomed to a lifetime of frustration: to be able to comprehend beauty, but not create it. His fingers itch at the thought, feeling swollen and engorged.
The throne room is still torchlit, although there are no revelers here. Strains of music still drift across the courtyard from the great hall, though, and the bard’s feet shuffle a bit in an ursine dance as he crosses the hall. “There.”
He gestures up at the harp, which is hung just at eye level, just across from the throne. It is a lovely thing, the wood red as holly berries, the wire of true silver. The jester looks at it in delight. “Oh, it is yours, it is yours!” she cries, not knowing how she knows this, knowing it is true.
“How can it be?” the magicker asks. “It is silver.
The jester shakes her head, and the bells clash, and she looks crestfallen. “I do not know. And I do not know my name.”
“You have only to name a thing,” says the bard, “To comprehend it.”
The magicker smiles. “Of course. That is the nature of . . .” His voice trails off, and he stares away, as if after his beloved. “. . . the nature of magic . . .”
His head snaps around, and he grasps the jester hard by the arm. “Sit there, on the steps of the dais,” he commands her. “No, better, on the throne.”
She steps back from him, tugging against his grip. “I cannot sit on the throne.”
“Do it,” he orders, and she follows his pull to perch, reluctantly, on the edge of the giant chair. The magicker reaches into his pocket, and draws forth a knife, small and sharp. It is the one he shaves with.
Carefully, quickly, he cuts the bells from her costume, and breaks them one by one under his heel. And then, from the same pocket, he brings forth a comb of bright silver, and he touches it to the end of her plait.
She starts up. “Do not!”
He shows her the comb. “I have never seen you with your hair unbound, lady,” he tells her. “Humor me.”
Trembling, she takes the seat again. Something almost soul-deep in her rebels at the thought. Something deeper, however, welcomes it. “Do,” she whispers, and clenches her fingers on the gilded wood.
It is a tedious task, freeing the intricate plaits from the strands of chains and bells. Somehow, they have not matted in, but they are tightly and complexly woven. He is surprised by the color, the texture of the unleashed mass of her hair.
It is like water as it rolls down her shoulders and over her thighs to pool on the floor. It is soft and thick, wavy from being bound, of a thousand shades of grey and white and argent and alabaster. It is a river, a thunderstorm, a sea, running, quick and silver, in rivulets and brooks and breakers over everything.
For the jester, it is as if each chain he slides from her tresses is a chain off her heart and her mind. “I feel,” she declares, “as if I am just about to remember something terribly important.”
As the magicker slips the last chain out of her moon-colored hair, his rings become caught in the strands. He tugs them loose, but not before the jester catches and holds his hands. “Why do you always wear those?”
He frowns. “I must.”
She is insistent. “Why? Who told you?”
He steps back, drops the chain to the floor with a rattle of metal. “I do not know,” he confesses. He pulls his hands from hers, leaving the silver comb in her grasp. “Someone.”
“Some strange taste of magics on this.” It is the bard’s voice. He has turned, at last, from the harp on the wall.
“Aye,” says the magicker. “A compulsion. But to help or to harm?”
She nods, and bites her lip to taste the blood. “If you do not know, can it be for good? All the more reason, I think, to be rid of them.”
He wants to explain that magic does not always work that way, that sometimes the recipient of a spell must know nothing of it for the spell to be truly effective. “There is a great sorcery being wrought within these walls tonight,” he offers. The bard looks over at him and nods.
“I feel it, aye.”
The magicker looks back at the jester, and silently holds out his hands, fingers spread wide. He looks away. “Take them,” he tells her.
One by one, she wrestles them free. They are tight, and have worn grooves in the flesh of his fingers. One by one, she drops them
to the cold stone floor.
The magicker feels a sudden easing, as though the rings had bound his chest, and not his fingers. He looks into the jester’s eyes, and feels something there, some flicker of recognition. “Name?” she asks him, and he shakes his head.
“You?”
“Not yet,” she answers. As one, they look to the bard. “If we were bound.
The magicker presses his lips together. “He must be too. And the white lord?”
She shakes her head, and no bells ring. “Remember what he said to the King?” She looks down at the backs of her hands, the shine of the silver comb in the right one. “Is there a way to tell what binds him?”
“Not without his name,” the magicker answers. The jester casts about the throne room, as if looking for a solution. Then she looks up, startled, into the eyes of the mage. “Daithi,” she tells him, and the bard turns suddenly toward her.
“What did your say?”
“Daithi,” she says again, this time looking at the bard. “Can’t you both hear it? ‘Am I not powerful? Am I not fair? Do you not love me, Niamh, Daman, Daithi?’ It’s perfectly clear. It’s the white lord’s voice—Finnegan’s voice.
The magicker shakes his head slowly. “That’s the binding. They are repeating it . . . you first, lady, that’s why you hear it now.”
Her head is bowed, suddenly. “Aye. I feel it. The pressure . . .” But the magicker has turned away, murmuring under his voice, “I am Daman . . .”
A flush of power colors his skin, and he raises his eyes to those of the bard. “And you are Daithi, and I will know how you are bound.
Daman the magicker holds out his hands, and lets the power run into them, unfettered by intricate steel. And then he lays those hands upon the brow of the bard Daithi, and then, unhesitating, plunges them into his matted hair. “There!” he cries out, as Daithi winces in sudden pain. “This!” And in his hand is a tuft of hair that is coarser and blacker even than that of the bard, and reeking of sharp animal musk.
“Bear fur?”
“It’s all matted in with his own.” Daman turns back to Daithi, who glances from one to the other. The jester holds out the silver comb, and Daithi blanches.
“Silver . . .”
“Will work all the better. Come, bard, sit on the throne and let me comb out your hair.”
Daithi crosses the room, sits as the jester sat before him, and looks down at the litter of chains and bells upon the floor.
Daman comes up before him, and holds out both hands. “Hold tight to me,” he instructs, and Daithi reaches out with his long musician’s fingers and wraps those of his friend within them. He closes his eyes, then, and grits his teeth, and groans between them as the silver comb brushes his hair.
Slowly, meticulously, the jester combs out the mats. Bit by bit, the scatter of hair upon the floor grows into a pile, and then a heap. Daithi bites through his lip and weeps silently as the blood flows into his beard, but he does not cry out and he does not flinch away, and at last, the jester is done.
He looks up at her with new eyes, then, and releases Daman’s hand to wipe the blood from off his face. “Your Majesty,” he calls her, and kneels at her feet, and she gestures him rise, the bard of her court. And Daman fetches his sword and Daithi’s harp from off the wall, and the two brothers, so alike and yet so different, smile at one another and then turn to their queen.
“The spell,” she whispers, sagging back against the throne. “Daman, attend me . . .
And then guardsmen are running into the torchlit room, and behind them two tall, golden-haired figures in white, and Daithi blows the dust from the Red Harp of Coinleach and strikes, once, hard, the lowest string. There is a trembling, and a shattering, and a note that rolls on and on and on as the drawn swords in the guardsmen’s hands shiver into splinters, and the guardsmen themselves raise hands to ears and cry out in pain.
Finnegan pushes them aside, and comes forward, reeking of foul herbs and with his hands spread wide. He takes another step toward Niamh, and Daman’s drawn blade gathers the light as it flashes toward him. He dives aside, and then Fearghall has a blade in his hand as well, and the battle is joined.
Niamh levers herself to her feet, her hair falling about her like a rich garment and one hand clenched on each arm of her throne, and raises her burning eyes in a black face to Finnegan’s blue ones. “Am I not powerful?” he whispers, as her eyes meet his. “Am I not fair? Do you not love me, Niamh . . .?” He says her name as a caress, and there is no question in his voice—only acceptance of allegiance duly offered.
“Aye, you are powerful,” she whispers. “And aye, you are fair.” Her hand extended, she steps toward him, and smiles a sweet, sad smile. And slaps him once across the cheek, hard enough to leave an ivory handprint that flushes slowly scarlet on the fairness of his skin. He rocks backward, and she strikes him again, and he falls before her fury, to lie amid the broken chains and bells.
He tries to stand, and Daithi is on him, one powerful hand pressing down until he kneels, head bowed, before the fury of the queen. “And I do not love thee, Finnegan Fey, for I know thee, and thy soul is black as thy face is fair. Be silent, or we will have thy tongue cut out, slaver, usurper, sorcerer.” There is a clatter across the hall, and Niamh looks up to see that Daman has disarmed Fearghall. Daman gestures Fearghall, as well, to his knees.
Niamh leaves the throne, strides across the room to stand before him. “Who?” she asks him. “Fearghall, you fooled us once. Tell us, Fearghall, who are we?”
“You are Niamh,” he answers, eyes downcast. There is a bleeding cut across his cheek. It is already healing. “You are Faerie.” His tongue seems to choke him. “And they are Daman and Daithi, your mage-champion and your bard.”
“And what are we, Fearghall?” She touches his head. “Tell us, and we may be merciful.”
“You are the queen of the Seelie Fey,” he answers, and she smiles and turns away. “Daman,” she says, and her mage looks up from his prisoner’s form.
“Majesty?”
“They are immortal. We cannot have them executed, any more than they could us. And I have promised this one, at least, some mercy. What shall we do with them, Daman?”
He appears thoughtful, and Daithi’s voice speaks from across the chamber’s width. “Majesty?”
“Daithi?”
“I have—an idea . . .”
In the court of the Queen of the Seelie Fey, there stands a red rowan and an ash tree. The limbs of the one are hung with chains and bells that tinkle and chime in the wind, except for those that are strangely crushed and broken. The branches of the other are decked with ten steel rings of strange and lovely design, forced onto the twigs as if onto the fingers of a hand.
HAVE NOT HAVE
Geoff Ryman
MAE LIVED IN THE LAST village in the world to go on line. After that, everyone else went on Air.
Mae was the village’s fashion expert. She advised on makeup, sold cosmetics, and provided good dresses. Every farmer’s wife needed at least one good dress. The richer wives, like Mr. Wing’s wife Kwan, wanted more than one.
Mae would sketch what was being worn in the capital. She would always add a special touch: a lime green scarf with sequins; or a lacy ruffle with colorful embroidery. A good dress was for display. “We are a happier people and we can wear these gay colors,” Mae would advise.
“Yes, that is true,” her customer might reply, entranced that fashion expressed their happy culture. “In the photographs, the Japanese women all look so solemn.”
“So full of themselves,” said Mae, and lowered her head and scowled, and she and her customer would laugh, feeling as sophisticated as anyone in the world.
Mae got her ideas as well as her mascara and lipsticks from her trips to the town. Even in those days, she was aware that she was really a dealer in information. Mae had a mobile phone. The mobile phone was necessary, for the village had only one line telephone, in the tea room. She needed to talk to her su
ppliers in private, because information shared aloud in the tea room was information that could no longer be sold.
It was a delicate balance. To get into town, she needed to be driven, often by a client. The art then was to screen the client from her real sources.
So Mae took risks. She would take rides by herself with the men, already boozy after the harvest, going down the hill for fun. Sometimes she needed to speak sharply to them, to remind them who she was.
The safest ride was with the village’s schoolteacher, Mr. Shen. Teacher Shen only had a pony and trap, so the trip, even with an early rise, took one whole day down and one whole day back. But there was no danger of fashion secrets escaping with Teacher Shen. His interests lay in poetry and the science curriculum. In town, they would visit the ice cream parlor, with its clean tiles, and he would lick his bowl, guiltily, like a child. He was a kindly man, one of their own, whose education was a source of pride for the whole village. He and Mae had known each other longer than they could remember.
Sometimes, however, the ride had to be with someone who was not exactly a friend.
In the April before everything changed there was to be an important wedding.
Seker, whose name meant Sugar, was the daughter of the village’s pilgrim to Mecca, their Haj. Seker was marrying into the Atakoloo family, and the wedding was a big event. Mae was to make her dress.
One of Mae’s secrets was that she was a very bad seamstress. The wedding dress was being made professionally, and Mae had to get into town and collect it. When Sunni Haseem offered to drive her down in exchange for a fashion expedition, Mae had to agree.
Sunni herself was from an old village family, but her husband Faysal Haseem was from further down the hill. Mr. Haseem was a beefy brute whom even his wife did not like except for his suits and money. He puffed on cigarettes and his tanned fingers were as thick and weathered as the necks of turtles. In the back seat with Mae, Sunni giggled and prodded and gleamed with the thought of visiting town with her friend and confidant who was going to unleash her beauty secrets.
