When the birds had disappeared, Talmar transformed the leafless twig into a miniature tree of metallic gold. Holding it with thumb and forefinger on top of his globe, he embellished it by causing gem-sparkling leaves and fruits to grow and unfold on its fine branches. When he took his hand away, the tree remained fixed to the globe.
So the display continued, seven feats determined at least in their outline by tradition, seven left completely to choice. Almost every traditional feat Talmar stamped with details of his own. Interspersed with these new effects, most of his selected tricks seemed comparatively mild. But always he used his globelight for greatest enhancement, now one color, now another, a spectrum between every two tricks, spinning sometimes one way and sometimes another, the golden tree reflecting additional glitters over the scene.
During the traditional last feat, making and spellcasting a protective charm for the assistant, he kept the entire spectrum revolving at a speed just slow enough for eye comfort. He proved the power of his new disk by tying it around his fingers and holding his own hand in flame for several minutes. For the first time that evening he failed to win an enthusiastic short song. That any magicker would risk natural flesh in such demonstration was unheard of. Even to put creatures temporarily transformed from inanimate material at such risk was unpopular, and half or more of the audience watched the turning shafts of light instead of the high wizard. But they agreed that Kara gained a protective charm which would not need renewing for years.
Talmar had performed fourteen tricks, the customary number, and that was not counting his preliminary business with rope and globe. But before his audience, still shocked by his last feat of hand in fire, could begin their concluding song, he held out both arms and declaimed:
“Cousins and friends! You may have heard gossip of my newest technique. You may have heard that I can make my globe show again, in reverse, whatever it has caught in reflection. Unable to demonstrate this to all of you at once in its fine detail, I have designed my entire display to demonstrate it on a larger scale.”
He held up a large, round wooden tray, transformed it into a mirror, and set it flat on the table. Taking his globe from its rope-stand, he removed the miniature gold tree, turned the sphere upside down, set it on the mirror, and made his new series of gestures over it.
All the colors it had spun during his performance began to repeat in reverse, bouncing up re-echoed and magnified by the mirror. Talmar replaced the little tree on what had become the globe’s top, and the glister of gold and tiny jewels doubled and repeated itself. He transformed numerous smaller mirrors, arranged them vertically around the large one, added a candle here, a small shell-sided lantern there. Colors and spangles flowed around the audience like a strange blizzard of tints and flames, almost tangible enough to feel.
Dilys held Torin close. “The ancients may have had something like this,” she murmured, very softly so as not to disturb the general hush. “Colored blossoms of fire that burst apart in the night sky and showered down without doing any harm. I wonder if it could have been so lovely?”
He returned her hug.
Talmar folded his arms at last and stood looking down at his audience through the play of lights, smiling as they finally began to applaud. They repeated the long song twice. The high wizard showed not the least difficulty in breathing.
Chapter Sixteen
Torin had come to her tent last night. Dilys waited in his tonight. She fingered what she had bought from Merprinel that morning, twice taking it out of its soft-lined bag to look at it again. And once she picked up the statuette of Ilfting and the Brightwings, the one Torin said might have come to life and spoken two nights ago. She could not understand why Kara and Ulrad had both wanted Ilfting and his porcupines, while neither had taken Ilfting and the Brightwings. This one, she thought, was better crafted, and the tale more widely known. She had invented the story of the three porcupines herself, and so far as she knew it had not yet traveled beyond Bavardek. But the statuette Kara had bought was much smaller and lighter.
Torin came in. At first she could not quite read his expression by candlelight. Happy, but not perfectly unmixed.
“Torinel? Whom did she choose?”
“Talmar.” He sat beside her on the bed. They each put an arm around the other, and he laughed softly. “Neither one of us, neither Valdart nor me. Thank Cel, not me! My brother Talmar.”
Dilys was unsurprised. “I expected it. Didn’t you, seeing them in his tent yesterday evening?”
“We both more or less expected it. Her mother, her grandmother, Cousin Alrathe, probably they all saw it even sooner. Valdart must have been the only one who never suspected. It seems he was simply her infatuation. As she was mine. We were both ripe for marriage, Sharilys and I, and the wrong newcomer stood in our moonlight to keep us from seeing the old companion for a while.”
“Fortunate for everyone none of you made it permanent. Though I still think she would have been more comfortable with you than with Valdart.… How did he accept her choice?”
Torin sighed deeply. “Someday he might understand. He didn’t tonight. He told me if I hadn’t advised her to wait, she’d have married him and been happy. Then he left Vathilda’s tent, alone. I didn’t try to follow him.”
“Wise.”
“At least he said it quietly, so she wouldn’t overhear, and he walked out slowly.”
“That promises healing.”
“Sharys probably doesn’t guess that she was only my infatuation, either.” Torin grinned. “You should have watched her being as gentle as possible with me, Dilysin. I don’t think she has any idea how comfortable I am with her choice. She should have concentrated more on being gentle with Valdartak.”
Too gentle with that adventurer, Dilys thought, and he might not have believed it. Asked which of the two she judged more susceptible to boasting sickness, Dilys would say Valdart rather than the high wizard. But that was nothing to tell Torin. “Valdart was already an excellent storyteller, Torinel,” she said. “This could make him even better. Good enough so that, if he ever decides to stop adventuring, he’ll be able to slip into true storycrafting with a year’s late apprenticeship.”
“Will all this make you a better storycrafter, too?”
“The wine-brawl will, I think.” She teased him a little. “More than almost losing you to Sharilys.” She had climbed over the worst of that long before this Amberleaf Fair. “But you had a long infatuation, Torinel. Half a year.”
“Too long. It would have been shorter if I’d offered her my marriage toy sooner.”
“But then she might have taken it.” Dilys slipped away from Torin long enough to get her carrying-bag. Snuggling close again, she unwrapped her purchase and laid it across both their knees. It was one of Merprinel’s finest mirrors, a double square of gold-tinted panes in blackwood frame embellished with gold leaf and ivory. The squares joined at one point, the joining so deep and clever that neither square seemed to lose a point. Dilys might not have felt she could afford it had she not earned extra moneygems thanks to this fair’s gossip, and had she not had to pay the mealseller less than she’d feared. But it made the perfect marriage token.
“Let me pay half whatever this cost,” said Torin after a moment. “That way, it can be both our token to one another.”
That struck her as a loveful idea. “All right. On condition that when the time comes you carve my birthing-bed charm yourself.”
* * * *
They went to the crimson tent together next morning. All over the rest of the ground fairgoers were starting to pack their possessions and fold their tents, but the scholars’ corner was still quiet. After a clear night, the two skyreaders would sleep until midday.
Alrathe was sitting outside, watching brazier and kettle.
“I’m sure you intend to tell them the true tale of Valdart’s glitterstone, Cousin,” said Dilys. “Do you mind if I hear it direct from you at the same time? I helped Torin list those foods to help you solve the
puzzle of Talmar’s illness.”
“Aye, the puzzles intertwine,” replied the judge. “I see no reason you should not stay, Cousin Storycrafter.”
Valdart came soon after. The valleys beneath his eyes were not as dark as might have been feared. Apparently he had begun to recover from his disappointment in time to get half a night’s sleep. He drew back on seeing Dilys, then shrugged and came forward again with something of his old strut.
They went inside for added privacy, Torin and Valdart carrying brazier and kettle. Alrathe motioned them to sit, and poured three cups of hot herbwater. Torin recognized one of the cups as borrowed from Vathilda.
“None for me, Cousin Judge,” said Valdart. “Uh… Cousin Kara wants to leave as early as possible.” He grinned at Torin. “She offered yesterday to hire me in Vittor’s place. I… After Sharys chose your brother the wizard, I decided to accept Kara’s offer. I guess that means no shared suppers and winter evenings after all, this year.”
“They’ll be waiting when you visit our neighborhood again.” Three years as Kara’s hired adventurer might smooth away the traces of rockslide better than any other remedy.
Valdart cleared his throat and nodded. “Aye. Well, I’m grateful for a few minutes of leavetaking. So, Cousin Judge, if you’ll explain things…like a story.”
Alrathe took the third cup of herbwater, sipped from it, and began. “The first puzzle was Talmar’s illness. The second was the appearance of the high wizard’s globe in Torin’s tent, the third the disappearance of the orangestone pendant from Valdart’s. All these incidents were bound together. A seeming fourth puzzle shook my confidence in my own reasoning yesterday morning when Valdart’s pendant reappeared, but it proved to be only a natural outgrowth.
“We already know how Talmar’s illness, which Mother Vathilda thought glory-choking, turned out to be simple sensitivity to a rather uncommon combination of foods. And Talmar made no secret of having sent his own globe to his brother in what he then believed a deathbed message to win the last of his family back to the family study.
“Talmar would not, however, name his messenger, at the messenger’s own insistence. It could only have been someone who was near him that afternoon, because when we left him alone to wait as we feared for the Harvest Spirit, who wisely decided to pass him by, he was too weak to have summoned anyone over a distance.
“It was not Torin, by logic and the workings of mind-messages as well as by Talmar’s own assurance. I saw no reason why any of the students—Vathilda, her family, and the skyreaders—should have desired such secrecy, unless in a spirit of teasing, and that did not fit the seriousness of Talmar’s condition. But I remembered that one other had stepped briefly into the Scholars’ Tent that afternoon, coming in with Iris on the pretext of unfinished business with the toymaker—”
“Ulrad!” Torin exclaimed. “And we assumed Talmar sent him a mind-message to leave him in quiet.”
Alrathe nodded. “Ulrad must have come partly in curiosity and partly because he truly had unfinished business with the toymaker. Talmar indeed sent the merchant a mind-message, but it was to come to him that night if he should be alone in his tent. At the moment, Talmar probably had only a confused idea of the use he would make of Ulrad; but Torin had already shown resistance to magic and to taking the globe.
“By the time Ulrad came that night, Talmar knew he would use him to deliver the globe; but he had to explain the trick of getting past Torin’s doorcharm: that such charms work only to keep mischief away and do not sense intention to bring harmless items inside as mischievous. Since all he planned was leaving Talmar’s globe in Torin’s tent, Ulrad could slip under the doorcord as easily as his bulk allowed, or even untie and retie it afterward.
“Ulrad must have guessed at once that the charm might recognize unauthorized trade as no more mischievous than a deposited gift. That would be why he made Talmar promise to keep his identity secret. No doubt the wizard thought this secrecy foolishness, but he saw no reason not to promise, and he kept his promise faithfully once it was made.
“Ulrad had particularly coveted Valdart’s pendant for most of this season, and he surely had enough experience to guess what even I was able to work out in an interview with Kara: that in theory, somewhere, a citron and an orangestone pendant might be worth the same price. Perhaps Ulrad concentrated on this theory all the while he entered Valdart’s tent and made the exchange, or perhaps our doorcharms have no sense whatever of comparative values. In any case, the citron was a genuine citron.
“I had reasoned all this very nearly as I’ve told it, and strongly suspected Ulrad to be the culprit; but he must have guessed my suspicions, or his own nervousness wore him down, especially after his involvement—innocent though his part was—in that wine-brawl between Valdart and Dilys. Knowing he must be present next morning for my final judgment in that case, and fearing I might take the opportunity to bring out his own guilt in the more serious matter, which I had indeed intended to do privately right afterward, he returned to Valdart’s tent that same night. This time he merely slipped his hand beneath the tentwall and left the pendant under the pinefeathers.”
“The footstep we heard that night!” said Dilys. “It might have been Ulrad.”
Valdart glanced at her, probably realizing that by “we” she meant herself and Torin. The adventurer shrugged, half-smiled, and nodded.
“When Valdart told us of the pendant’s reappearance,” the judge went on, “I naturally had to sort through and retest my theory. I consulted Vathilda, who agreed that my reasoning had been sound and in accordance with the facts of our neighborhood’s magic. Then I visited Ulrad. Fortunately, he had not dared leave a day early, for fear of rousing further suspicion. In his extreme nervousness, he confessed everything after a question or two—everything, I mean, except a few private thought processes which I saw little reason to probe more exactly.”
“What correction did you give the sneak thief?” Valdart asked grimly.
Alrathe produced the citron, two moneypouches, and two large bottles. “Ten pebbles’ worth of moneygems and a bottle of rarespice cordial apiece to Valdart and Torin for the mental discomfort and strain to old friendship. Valdart also keeps the citron. Since Ulrad himself returned the pendant, and since he suffered great nervous anguish, I judged the cost of these repayments sufficient correction. He is not likely to attempt such mischief again, so the correction will have served its purpose. And as long as he behaves whenever in our neighborhood, I have promised him secrecy for the sake of his honest business. I believe he was probably among the first to depart this morning.”
Valdart took his moneypouch, bottle, and citron, counted the moneygems, unstoppered the bottle to drink a few swallows, declared it excellent, and got to his feet. “Well, Cousin Judge, I’d have asked two or three bottles of this stuff, but…”
“You owe me a pebble for my judgment,” Alrathe said quietly.
“What? But I canceled my complaint yesterday morning.”
“Nevertheless, you were the complainant who led me to discover a culprit and whose property might not have been returned if not for my probing.”
“Cousin Alrathe,” said Torin, “I’ll pay the pebble.”
“Valdart will pay it,” replied the judge. “It may help him remember to think more carefully before bringing another complaint. Had you contented yourself with reporting your loss, Cousin Adventurer…but you also accused an innocent person specifically and rashly. You were more responsible than was Ulrad for your friend’s discomfort.”
“In that case,” said the adventurer, “why don’t I pay Torinel the pebble?”
Alrathe nodded.
“Good.” Valdart turned to Torin. “Take this cordial instead of the pebble, Chosen Brother. Too big a bottle for me to pack along. We’d just drink it right away along the road.”
Torin accepted the bottle, intending to give it to Alrathe when Valdart was gone.
“Well, Torinival.” The adventurer rubbed the toym
aker’s shoulder. “We’ll say our right good-byes for this time when I come to the old neighborhood again. Just before we say our greetings.”
“Valdartiak.”
Valdart turned and left, eating his citron.
Alrathe refused the whole bottle, but took two small glasses of its contents with Dilys and Torin to help celebrate their marriage.
THE END
Author’s Note, 2012 Edition
Because somewhere along the years I heard something about readers trying to fit this short novel into my Tanglelands material, perhaps I should state here that in my own mind the two settings are completely different and have nothing in common except such coincidental resemblances as may arise from unavoidable quirks of an individual author’s brain—e.g., similarities of phrasing and invented nomenclature. I grant, for instance, that both settings have doorcurtains. Nevertheless, I for one would never attempt to reconcile them. At the very least, Torin’s world would have to be removed by millennia of time, and probably many thousands of miles, from that of Frostflower and Thorn.
Tanglelands society (apart from the sorceri) is male-dominated: women are the fighters because the male body is considered too important to risk. As far as gender is concerned, the Gentle World is completely egalitarian; and there are no warriors at all, at least in any lands Torin knows of. The farmer-priestly religion of the Tanglelands is wildly polytheistic, with a deity for almost everything; the religion of the sorceri very strictly, starkly, and simply monotheistic. The Gentle World has a sort of modified monotheism much like our own: Cel (pronounced with either a hard or a soft “C”) is the single god, but four major messenger spirits fill much the place in people’s everyday religious consciousness that “angels” play in ours: Thala, spirit of the east wind, spring, birth and childhood; Rilvar, spirit of the south wind, summer, youth and maturity; Thyrna, spirit of the west wind, autumn, and the “golden years”; and Vikal, spirit of the north wind, winter, and death. Ilfting the Dwarf is a favorite legendary figure—we might say a great saint like Francis of Assisi—but not a divinity; at the very most, and only in certain limited times, places, and interpretations, a demi-god. The skills of the Tanglelands sorceri are completely different from the magic of Torin’s world, which I tried to conceive as descending from the technology of our own. The Tanglelands comprise a relatively small area, enclosed and isolated on all four sides by mountain ranges. The Torin tales are set in a world as wide as our own. Indeed, as I visualize it, it is our own. For the Tanglelands, I have never worked out any history or geography beyond their own enclosing mountains. The setting wherein Torin lives, which in my own mind goes by the name “The Gentle World,” I conceive as post-holocaust: my idea being that the human race actually learned something by blowing their world apart, and, bit by bit, did a better job of putting it back together. By Torin’s time, the holocaust is remembered only dimly and vaguely, as a rain of fiery rocks—it may seem to them more or less as Noah’s Flood seems to us. They are, in fact, no longer entirely what we think of as “human”—they are on their way to becoming another and gentler species, similar to—for example—the Organians of the Star Trek universe. Their language does not even have words for fighting and conflict: the nearest you should have found in this novel is “brawl” (which, incidentally, shares a pronunciation with “bransle,” a type of dance). Their games are cooperative and non-competitive; they talk about life as a mountain to be climbed rather than a battle to be fought. Theft remains a common crime because their sense of personal property is breaking down.
At Amberleaf Fair Page 17
