Children of Magic

by Greenberg, Martin H.

  Shahira watched him for a long moment after he had finished speaking. “You could run,” she told him at last. “And even escape. But the younglings would be lost there.”

  “Better there than in the hands of men and women such as these.”

  She shook her head. “Do you not believe that without us, the Summer will last forever?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Your people will die—”

  His eyes burned; he was lost to Summer, then. “They killed my father,” he said, his voice low. “And my mother is certain to follow. They had no one but me. They didn’t care for us—why should I care what happens to them?” And he threw his arms wide, to encompass not only the city, but the whole of the world.

  “You should care,” she told him gently, “because you are better than they are.” For it was true, what he said; the priests did not care. “You spend all your time in your tent.”

  “With guards.”

  “With guards,” she said. “But you could join us. Not all of the Priests are like the ones who came—”

  “Don’t make excuses for them.”

  She nodded again. “I don’t care for them,” she said at last, meaning it. “I don’t care if they die, and the Summer scorches their flesh from their bones. I don’t care if they freeze in the long Winter. And home is far away,” she added, looking back over her shoulder, “and it is hard to care for it, although easy to miss it. I miss the longhouse greatly.”

  “You aren’t angry?”

  “I am,” she said, “and with less cause.”

  “You talk like an old woman.”

  “I talk like my grandmother.” She paused, and then added, “but I care about these children. Because if I don’t, who will? You?”

  “They’re just sheep,” he said bitterly.

  She nodded.

  He shoved his sleeve up with a savagery she had seldom seen. “And we’re branded, like sheep. Don’t you understand? We are walking to our deaths!”

  She almost hit him, then. But the children were not present, and they had not heard his words.

  “They will kill you, if you escape,” she told him quietly. “And they may kill my children, as well. Yes, I know why we were branded. I know that we face death.”

  “Then will you not—”

  “But my grandmother said we are walking to death from the moment we open our eyes and draw breath. Sometimes it’s a long walk, and sometimes it’s a short one, but it’s always, always toward death.”

  He looked at her and shook his head.

  “We are the only warriors they have,” she countered, trying a different tactic. “And if we have no swords and shed no blood, it doesn’t change the truth. We should have been escorted in honor,” she added, “and your parents honored as well. But should have doesn’t matter. The children don’t know,” she added. “You could tell them; I can’t stop you. But if it’s true that we face death, is it better to face it screaming and crying? Is it better for their last days to be spent in terror and dread?”

  “It’s better to know what we face.”

  “But we don’t know,” she replied, matching his intensity, but wrapped now in layers of cold chill. “We don’t know what we face. If it was just our deaths they wanted, we would all be dead already. They could have just sent men with swords to kill us.”

  He stopped for a moment, then, and studied her face as if it were new to him. At last he said, “You don’t believe we will die.”

  “I don’t believe we will all die,” she replied calmly. “This is a magic meant to save life.”

  “Aye, and in the old stories, the greater the magic, the greater the cost.”

  She nodded, but added, “not all of the price paid is death.”

  “Sometimes it’s worse.”

  She nodded again, thinking of her grandmother, and their bitter Winter. “We have each other, and only each other,” she told him quietly. “We who are marked and bound for the city. These children are my brothers and sisters, and you, Estavos, like my brother Otto, are one of us, whether we will it or no.”

  “You had a brother?”

  “I have four,” she told him. “Otto is always in trouble. He is a great trial to our family.”

  “You sound like an old woman again.”

  “I hope so.”

  “All right.”

  She looked at him.

  “I won’t tell the young ones.”

  “And what do you want from me in return?”

  He shook his head, like a wild thing, his shoulders bending toward the ground. “I don’t know,” he whispered. “I want justice, I want vengeance, I want death.”

  “But not your own.”

  “I want to live to see it,” he replied. “No one else will give me what I want.”

  “Then if it is in my power, I will help you. I told you, I don’t care about these men and women—well, maybe one of them—but I care about us.”

  All true, and truth could be bitter in unforeseen ways.

  They entered the city, bedraggled, bruised, tired, and they were led through it like an odd procession of beggar children. There were other children here, in the streets, sitting in the scant shade of tall buildings, pressed together in a huddle that made the longhouse seem empty in comparison.

  “Why are they here?” Shahira asked Adelos. “Where are their families?”

  “Most of them are probably safer here than with their families,” he replied. “But it’s not so bad today.”

  “But they’re so young—look at that boy—”

  Adelos caught her hand and pushed it back to her side. “They’ll not come near you while we’re here,” he told her, “but they’re like starving dogs; they’re dangerous in packs. It doesn’t matter how young they look to you, Shahira. You’ve the children in your care, and these—these are beyond you. Accept it.”

  She held her arms stiff by her side as they walked. It was true; the boys and girls shied away from the armed men who walked through the streets, and the priests and the priestesses did not seem to notice them; they were less than ghosts, although they were alive.

  She wondered if any of these men and women had ever held a child.

  “I see you’ve taken Estavos into your fold,” he added, lowering his voice. “It was a messy business, that.”

  She said nothing.

  “Shahira.”

  “Don’t, Adelos. Don’t excuse them.”

  “Girl, I don’t. But the father drew sword against the men, and he would not be—”

  “Adelos. My father would have drawn sword against you, and you know it; you knew it that day. But he didn’t because you understood him. If you had been sent for Estavos, his father might still be alive.”

  “I don’t know that, girl. Had your father chosen to fight, we would have fought, and all of us are better trained than one desperate man with a weapon.” His voice was low and bitter. “We’ve made our vows, and been given our swords; they are blessed, and they will not fail us. Or so we’re told. But it was a bad business, all round.”

  She said nothing as the streets widened. It was hard to talk, the stench was so overpowering. But Adelos did not seem to notice it.

  Ademi pushed himself between them, catching Adelos by the hand. “Will we get to see the King?” he asked.

  “Aye,” the man said wearily, “You’ll see the King, that’s a certainty.”

  And from his tone, Shahira had something new to worry about, for she knew that he was afraid. For them.

  But they did not see the King that day; they saw instead the rise of the most beautiful building that Shahira had ever seen. It was made not of wood, but of stone and glass, and it rose up, and up again, as if it would go on forever. It cast a long, long shadow as they approached it, but even in shadow, it was like a story, like something too grand for a story, as it stood in the center of large, empty circle.

  The children were awestruck, save only Estavos, and they spoke—when they could—in a hus
h.

  “Is this where the King lives?” Ademi finally asked, but he asked Shahira.

  Shahira looked at Adelos, and Adelos shook his head.

  “Not here,” she said quietly, finding words with difficulty. Song, she might offer, but even that would come out quavering. “I think this is the place where people try to speak with gods,” she added. “For the gods themselves would be impressed by such a place as this.”

  “Gods live here?”

  “No, don’t be silly. Gods live here,” she told him, placing one hand firmly over her heart.

  “But sometimes they’re hard of hearing,” Estavos added.

  “Because they’re old?” Ademi asked in reply. Estavos batted him gently on the top of the head, and offered a warning nod at the back of a nearby priest. If Ademi was not afraid of Estavos, he understood that the priests were different, and fell silent.

  They loved any silence but their own.

  It was to silence that the children were led at last, in this grand building, with its cold floors and cold walls. Even the color of tapestries that lined those walls for what seemed miles did not diminish the chill here. It was not a Winter chill; it would not kill, and it was not the cold against which men gathered. Rather, it was a cold they esteemed, even revered. Shahira, from the wood and smoke of the longhouse, hated it, even as she loved its beauty. She held the hands of the children prone to wandering or touching things, for she knew that the Priests would not tolerate it; this gawking wonder was evidence of their inferiority.

  But to Shahira, it was different; she wondered at men and women who could walk in such a place and feel no true wonder, could offer only the mockery of reverence without the substance. Her children—they understood that there was a magic in this place of stone, in its height and its echoing stillness. Had she not been escorted by priests, she would have encouraged them.

  As it was, she attempted to play by the rules they set; to say nothing, to notice little, to be above it somehow. It was difficult, but difficult, as her grandmother said, was beside the point. It was necessary.

  They were led to a large, large room, one bigger than the longhouse in its entirety. It had only a small window, and none of the coloured glass that made light so beautiful; it had a large, solid door with a big ring that opened from the outside. Like a cage door, she thought, but without the obvious bars.

  There were, however, beds, stacked in twos, against the walls, and these beds had blankets—which were pointless in the swelter of the heat—and pillows. By the foot of each of these beds was a chest into which the children were to place their belongings, the last word said with a barely concealed sneer.

  As their belongings consisted almost entirely of the clothing they wore, the chests themselves were cavernous and empty.

  “You are in the temple now,” the Priest who was oldest said sternly, “and while here, you will wear the robes of the most junior of our servants, and you will comport yourselves with dignity. Do you understand? You will eat in the hall after the novitiates, and you will speak to no one.”

  They nodded.

  Adelos was still with them. “Do not attempt to leave the grounds,” the Priest added, “or we will be forced to lock the doors.”

  So, Shahira thought, with the slightest of glances at Adelos’ face, it starts. But after the priest had closed the door, she said, simply, “They are afraid we will get lost in the big city, and if we are lost, we will not be able to find one another.”

  Estavos snorted, but said nothing.

  Winter, she thought, braving the cold that could kill.

  She gathered the children around her in a large circle, and she began to sing; they joined her, unaware of the way their voices blended. It wasn’t harmony, but the cacophony was soothing and sweet nonetheless. While the world raged without, they could find some comfort and safety within their walls, and if the walls were of stone, it signified nothing.

  Thus, Shahira kept Winter in her heart.

  The robes came in the morning. They were not perfect, and they were overlarge, but they were soft and fine, and the children were—once the boys had been convinced that these were not dresses—happy enough to be free of the dirt and dust of the long voyage. The beds were neither soft nor hard, and the food was food, and better than they had had in village or on the road for many days.

  But they were not allowed the company of any but their guards, and even these had been winnowed. The gods were kind, in this; Adelos was allowed to remain. Or, Shahira amended, as the days passed, the gods were kind to the children; for Adelos, they showed little mercy.

  At seven days, they were taught to sing a song whose words were not, as far as Shahira or any of the children were concerned, words at all. They were nonsense, and the priests were unkind; the nonsense must be sung in the correct tones, the correct harmonies. They were quick to anger, the men and women who came, and Shahira took great care to memorize their faces; she refused them the honor of remembering their names.

  But it was Adelos who at last pulled her aside. “It is not easier for them,” he said quietly, “to do what must be done.”

  “They show no kindness and no understanding—”

  “They cannot afford kindness, Shahira. Understand that,” he was weary. “And if you must hate, hate them, hate the gods, hate as will. When men are forced to acts of barbarism, they deal with it as they, too, must.”

  “I would not.”

  “No, you would not. And I can only hope that my own daughter would suffer as you have suffered, Shahira. Your parents must have been proud of you.”

  She offered him a slight smile, then. “Not always.”

  “Not always, but no parent is always proud, and no child always worthy of pride. We are all tested,” he added, “and if failure marks a man—or a woman, or even a child—forever, than we are all marked. Life is unkind, but some men are fortunate enough to be tested again, and to pass what they failed in ignorance before. We learn humility that way.”

  She saw no humility in the Priests, but took care, when Adelos was present, to school her face, to relax her expression. And when they left, she worked with the children, schooling her expression more easily. “We do not all have fine voices,” she told them, “and we do not always remember what we are told.”

  “I do,” Ademi said. She batted the top of his head and frowned. But the expression had no ferocity in it, and too much affection; he smiled at her before her hand had reached her side.

  Three days of lessons, the same song over and over. At night, she would sing different songs, pulling the children into a huddle; she had used a circle on the road, but the circle that the priests had drawn was so rigid she thought to break it or soften its lines. There was always a scuffle for her lap, or the lap of the other girl her age, and there were often tears, for the priests little valued their sleep, but in the end, sleep overtook tears, and Shahira was last to succumb to it, protecting them, watching over them as she could.

  On the fourth day, they were brought different robes, much finer than the ones they had yet worn. They were cautioned to silence, and formed up into two neat lines, and for once the priests looked almost human; they were worried, and it showed. They did not lift hand, although their words were sharp; they gave orders, and the children, entranced by their finery into an awareness of the importance of occasion, followed those orders without exception. Even Estavos, although he was the only one who managed to be sullen.

  Excitement and fear were twined as they walked the long, tall halls, their steps echoing in the harmony of sound their voices were only barely capable of producing. It was hot, but the men and women suffered the heat more prominently than the children, who had become accustomed to the sting of sun and the lack of water in their homes. Were it not for the absence of their parents, their whole families, they might have felt only excitement.

  They were led from the long halls through a garden that the sun and the wind did not touch, and they were allowed a moment to marvel at th
e fountain which sat in its center, spouting water as if water were not of more value than gold or grain.

  And then the moment passed, and they were led once again past this garden and into another hall. But this hall had an end, and it was a dais, and the floor was marble strewn with gold and smoke and fire. There was a long, crimson carpet, edged in the same gold, that seemed narrow until Shahira stood upon it; it was wide, but the room was wider still, and no ceiling she had yet seen was taller. This one was also round, like the inside of a cupped palm placed with care over something fragile and vulnerable.

  Thus it was that the children were led into the presence of the King, and they knew him as King by his raiment, his crown, and the distant beauty of his expression. By these things and the throne upon which he sat, finer by far than the room, and more intimidating than the height of its ceilings, the utter silence it contained.

  The guards knelt the moment they halted, and the children were for once of the same mind; they knelt as well, their robes spilled about them as if they were the petals of an odd, rectangular flower that was only beginning to blossom.

  The King was silent as he rose and walked across the long platform which held his fine chair; silent as he came down the steps which led to it, approaching the Priests—who remained standing—and the people who knelt.

  The oldest of the priests bowed low to the King.

  “These are the children?” The King asked, although he did not look at the Priest.

  The priest, however, did not look away from the King. “Your Royal Highness,” he said, executing the same perfect bow, “these are the children. We surrender them to your keeping.”

  He nodded, this man with his golden hair and his sky blue eyes. “I accept them into my keeping; your duty in this regard is done.” He paused. “Twenty-four,” he said quietly.

  “Your majesty.”

  “And the other two?”

  “They did not survive their early years.”

  “Very well. What the gods decree, they decree.” He now looked at the children, as they knelt, and said, “You may rise.”