by Tad Williams
“Does Josua like music?!” For some reason this thought astounded Simon. He poured himself another cupful. “He seems so serious.”
“And serious he is…but that doesn’t mean he dislikes harping or lute playing. True, it is my melancholy songs that are most often to his liking, but there are times when he calls for the Ballad of Three-Legged Tom or some such.”
Before Simon could ask another question, there was a great whoop of hilarity from the high table. Simon turned to see that Fengbald had knocked a flagon of wine into the lap of another man, who was drunkenly wringing out his shirt while Elias and Guthwulf and the other nobles jibed and shouted. Only the bald stranger in the scarlet robe was aloof, with cold eyes and a tight, tooth-baring smile.
“Who is that?” Simon turned back to Sangfugol, who had finished his wine and was holding his lute up to his ear, plucking at the strings as he delicately turned the pegs. “I mean the man in red.”
“Yes,” said the harper, “I saw you looking at him when I came up. Frightful fellow, eh? That is Pryrates—a Nabbanai priest, one of Elias’ counselors. People say that he is a marvelous alchemist—although he does look rather young for it, doesn’t he? Not to mention that it doesn’t quite seem a fitting practice for a priest. Actually, if you listen closely, you may also hear it whispered that he is a warlock: a black magician. If you listen closer still…“Here, as if to demonstrate, Sangfugol’s voice dropped dramatically; Simon had to lean forward to hear. He realized, as he swayed slightly, that he had just drunk a third flagon of wine.
“If you listen very, very carefully…” the harper continued, “you will hear people say that Pryrates’ mother was a witch, and his father…a demon!” Sangfugol loudly twanged a lute-string, and Simon leaped back, surprised. “But Simon, you cannot believe everything you hear—especially from drunken minstrels,” Sangfugol finished with a chuckle and extended his hand. Simon stared at it stupidly.
“To clasp, my friend,” the harper grinned. “I have enjoyed speaking with you, but I fear I must return to table, where other diversions impatiently await me. Farewell!”
“Farewell…” Simon grasped Sangfugol’s hand, then watched as the harper wound his way across the room with the nimbleness of an experienced drunkard.
As Sangfugol took his seat again, Simon’s eyes came to rest on two of the serving girls leaning against a wall in the hallway at the room’s far side, fanning themselves with their aprons and talking. One of them was Hepzibah, the new girl; the other was Rebah, one of the kitchen maids.
There was a certain warmth in Simon’s blood. It would be so easy to walk across the room and speak to them. There was something about that Hepzibah, a sauciness in her eyes and mouth when she laughed…Feeling more than a little lightheaded, Simon stepped out into the room, the roar of voices rising around him like a flood.
A moment, a moment, he thought feeling suddenly flushed and frightened, how can I just walk up and speak—won’t they know I’ve been watching them? Wouldn’t they…
“Hi there, you lazy clodpoll! Bring us some more of that wine!”
Simon turned to see red-faced Earl Fengbald waving a goblet at him from the king’s table. In the hallway the serving girls were sauntering away. Simon ran back to the alcove to get his ewer, and fetched it out from a tangle of dogs fighting over a chop. One pup, young and scrawny, with a splotch of white on its brown face, whined piteously at the fringe of the mob, unable to compete with the larger dogs. Simon found a scrap of greasy skin on a deserted chair and tossed it to the little dog. It wagged its stub of tail as it bolted the treat, then followed at Simon’s heels as he carried the ewer across the room.
Fengbald and Guthwulf, the long-jawed Earl of Utanyeat, were involved in some kind of wrist-wrestling contest, their daggers drawn and plunged into the tabletop on either side of the combatants’ arms. Simon stepped around the table as nimbly as he could, pouring wine from the heavy ewer into the cups of the shouting spectators and trying not to trip over the dog, which was darting in and out between his feet. The king was watching the contest with amusement, but he had his own page at his shoulder so Simon left his goblet alone. He poured Pryrates’ wine last, avoiding the priest’s glance, but could not help noticing the strange scent of the man, an inexplicable amalgam of metal and over-sweet spices. Backing away, he saw the little dog rooting in the straw near Pryrates’ shiny black boots, on the track of some fallen treasure.
“Come!” Simon hissed, backing farther away and slapping his knee, but the dog paid no heed. It began to dig with both paws, its back bumping against the priest’s red-robed calf. “Come along!” Simon whispered again.
Pryrates turned his head to look down, shiny skull pivoting slowly on his long neck. He lifted his foot and brought his heavy boot down on the dog’s back—a swift, compact movement finished in a heartbeat. There was a crack of splintered bone, and a muffled squeal; the little dog writhed helplessly in the straw until Pryrates lifted his heel again and crushed its skull.
The priest stared for a disinterested moment at the body, then lifted his gaze, his eyes alighting on Simon’s horrified face. That black stare—remorseless, unconcerned—caught and held him. Pryrates’ flat, dead eyes flicked down again to the dog, and when they returned to Simon a slow grin stretched across the priest’s face.
What can you do about it, boy? the smile said. And who cares?
The priest’s attention was drawn back to the table; Simon, freed, dropped the ewer and stumbled away, looking for a place to throw up.
It was just before midnight; fully half the revelers had staggered, or been carried, off to bed. It was doubtful many of them would be present for the morrow’s coronation. Simon was pouring into a drunken guest’s cup the heavily watered wine that was all Peter Gilded-Bowl would serve at this late hour, when Earl Fengbald, the only one remaining of the king’s party, staggered into the hall from the commons outside. The young noble was disheveled and his breeches were half-undone, but he wore a beatific smile on his face.
“Come outside, everybody!” he shouted. “Come outside now! Come see!” He lurched back out the door. Those who could do it pulled themselves to their feet and followed him, elbowing and jesting, some singing drunkenly.
Fengbald stood in the commons, head tilted backward, black hair hanging unbound down the back of his stained tunic as he stared up into the sky. He was pointing; one by one, the faces of the followers turned up to look.
Across the sky a strange shape was painted, like a deep wound that spurted blood against the nightblack: a great, red comet, streaming across the sky from north to south.
“A bearded star!” someone shouted. “An omen!”
“The old king is dead, dead, dead!” cried Fengbald, waving his dagger in the air as if daring the stars to come down and fight. “Long live the new king!” he shouted. “A new age is begun!”
Cheers rang out, and some of those present stamped their feet and howled. Others began a giddy, laughing dance, men and women holding hands as they whirled in a circle. Above them the red star gleamed like a smoldering coal.
Simon, who had followed the merrymakers outside to see the cause of the ruckus, turned back to the hall; the shouts of the dancers floated up behind him. He was surprised to see Doctor Morgenes standing in the shadows of the bailey wall. The old man, wrapped in a heavy robe against the chill air, did not notice his apprentice—he, too, was staring up at the bearded star, the scarlet slash across the vault of Heaven. But unlike the others, there was no drunkenness or glee upon his face. He looked fearful and cold and small.
He looked, Simon thought, like a man alone in the wilderness listening to the hungry song of wolves…
7
The Conqueror Star
The spring and summer of Elias’ first regnal year were magical, sun-bright with pomp and display. All Osten Ard seemed reborn. The young nobility came back to fill the Hayholt’s long-quiet halls, and so marked was the difference that they might have brought color and dayligh
t with them to what had been a dark place. As in John’s young days the castle was full of laughter and drinking, and the swagger of shining battle-blades and armor. At night music was heard in the hedged gardens once more, and the splendid ladies of the court flitted to—or fled from—assignations in the warm darkness like graceful, flowing ghosts. The tourney field sprang back to life, sprouting multicolored tents like a bank of flowers. To the common people it seemed as though every day was holiday, and that the merrymaking would have no end. King Elias and his friends made furious sport, in the manner of children who must soon be put to bed, and know it. All of Erkynland seemed to roister and tumble like a summer-drunken dog.
Some of the villagers muttered darkly—it was hard to get the spring crop sowed with such heedlessness in the air. Many of the older, sourer priests grumbled at the spread of licentiousness and gluttony. But most people laughed at these doomsayers. Elias’ monarchy was but newly-coined, and Erkynland—all of Osten Ard, it seemed—had come out of a long winter of age into a season of headlong youth. How could that be unnatural?
Simon felt his fingers cramping as he laboriously traced the letters onto the gray parchment. Morgenes was at the window, holding a long, fluted piece of glass pipe up to the sunlight as he examined it for dirt.
If he says one word about the thing not being properly cleaned, I’ll walk out, Simon thought. The only sunshine I see anymore is what’s reflected in the beakers I polish.
Morgenes turned from the window and brought the piece of glass pipe over to the table where Simon slaved at his writing. As the old man approached, Simon prepared himself for the scolding, feeling a swelling of resentment that seemed to lodge between his shoulder blades.
“A lovely job, Simon!” Morgenes said as he laid the pipette down beside the parchment. “You take much better care of things around here than I ever could by myself.” The doctor gave him a pat on the arm and leaned over. “How are you coming there?”
“Terribly,” Simon heard himself say. Even though the resentful knot was still there, he was disgusted by the petty tone of his own voice. “I mean, I’ll never be good at this. I can’t make the letters cleanly without the ink blobbing up, and I can’t read any of what I’m writing anyway!” He felt a little better for having said it, but he still felt stupid.
“You’re worrying about nothing, Simon,” the doctor said, and straightened up. He seemed distracted: as he spoke his eyes darted about the room. “First of all, everybody’s writing ‘blobs up’ at first; some folk spend their whole lives blobbing up—that doesn’t mean they have nothing important to say. Secondly, of course you can’t read the things you’re writing—the book is written in Nabbanai. You can’t read Nabbanai.”
“But why should I copy words that I don’t understand?” Simon growled. “That’s foolish.”
Morgenes turned sharp eyes back to Simon. “Since I told you to do it, I suppose I’m foolish, too?”
“No, I didn’t mean that…it’s just that…”
“Don’t bother to explain.” The doctor pulled up a stool and sat by Simon’s side. His long, bent fingers scrabbled aimlessly in the rubbish of the tabletop. “I want you to copy these words because it’s easier to concentrate on the form and shape of your letters if you’re not distracted by the subject matter.”
“Hmmmph.” Simon felt only partially satisfied. “Can’t you tell me what book it is, anyway? I keep looking at the pictures, but I still can’t figure it out.” He flipped the page back to an illustration that he had stared at many times in the past three days, a grotesque woodcut of an antlered man with huge staring eyes and black hands. Cringing figures huddled at his feet; above the horned man’s head a flaming sun hung against an ink-black sky.
“Like this,” Simon pointed at the strange picture, “here at the bottom it says, ‘Sa Asdridan Condiquilles’—what does that mean?”
“It means,” Morgenes said as he closed the cover and picked the book up, “The Conqueror’s Star,’ and it is not the kind of thing that you need to know about.” He placed the book on a precariously balanced stack against the wall.
“But I’m your apprentice!” Simon protested. “When are you going to teach me something?”
“Idiot boy! What do you think I’m doing? I’m trying to teach you to read and to write. That’s the most important thing. What do you want to learn?”
“Magic!” Simon said immediately. Morgenes stared at him.
“And what about reading…?” the doctor asked ominously.
Simon was cross. As usual, people seemed determined to balk him at every turn. “I don’t know,” he said. “What’s so important about reading and letters, anyway? Books are just stories about things. Why should I want to read books?”
Morgenes grinned, an old stoat finding a hole in the henyard fence. “Ah, boy, how can I be mad at you…what a wonderful, charming, perfectly stupid thing to say!” The doctor chuckled appreciatively, deep in his throat.
“What do you mean?” Simon’s eyebrows moved together as he frowned. “Why is it wonderful and stupid?”
“Wonderful because I have such a wonderful answer,” Morgenes laughed. “Stupid because…because young people are made stupid, I suppose—as tortoises are made with shells, and wasps with stings—it is their protection against life’s unkindnesses.”
“Begging your pardon?” Simon was totally flummoxed, now.
“Books,” Morgenes said grandly, leaning back on his precarious stool, “—books are magic. That is the simple answer. And books are traps as well.”
“Magic? Traps?”
“Books are a form of magic—” the doctor lifted the volume he had just laid on the stack, “—because they span time and distance more surely than any spell or charm. What did so-and-so think about such-and-such two hundred years agone? Can you fly back through the ages and ask him? No—or at least, probably not.
“But, ah! If he wrote down his thoughts, if somewhere there exists a scroll, or a book of his logical discourses…he speaks to you! Across centuries! And if you wish to visit far Nascadu, or lost Khandia, you have also but to open a book…”
“Yes, yes, I suppose I understand all that.” Simon did not try to hide his disappointment. This was not what he had meant by the word “magic.” “What about traps, then? Why “traps’?”
Morgenes leaned forward, waggling the leather-bound volume under Simon’s nose. “A piece of writing is a trap,” he said cheerily, “and the best kind. A book, you see, is the only kind of trap that keeps its captive—which is knowledge—alive forever. The more books you have,” the doctor waved an all-encompassing hand about the room, “the more traps, then the better chance of capturing some particular, elusive, shining beast—one that might otherwise die unseen.” Morgenes finished with a grand flourish, dropping the book back on the pile with a loud thump. A tiny cloud of dust leaped up, the flecks milling in the banded sunlight leaking past the window bars.
Simon stared at the shimmering dust for a moment, collecting his thoughts. Following the doctor’s words was like trying to catch mice while wearing mittens.
“But what about real magic?” he said at last, a stubborn crease between his brows. “Magic like they say Pryrates does up in the tower?”
For a brief instant a look of anger—or was it fear?—contorted the doctor’s face.
“No, Simon,” he said quietly. “Do not throw Pryrates up to me. He is a dangerous, foolish man.”
Despite his own horrid memories of the red priest, Simon found the intensity of the doctor’s look strange and a little frightening. He nerved himself to ask another question. “You do magic, don’t you? Why is Pryrates dangerous?”
Morgenes stood suddenly, and for a wild moment Simon feared that the old man might strike him, or shout. Instead Morgenes walked stiffly to the window and stared out for a moment. From where Simon sat, the doctor’s thin hair was a bristly halo above his narrow shoulders.
Morgenes turned and walked back. His face was grave, trouble
d by doubt. “Simon,” he said, “it will probably do me no good at all to say this, but I want you to keep away from Pryrates—don’t go near him, and don’t talk about him…except to me, of course.”
“But why?” Contrary to what the doctor might think, Simon had already decided to stay far away from the alchemist. Morgenes was not usually so forthcoming, though, and Simon was not going to waste the opportunity. “What is so bad about him?”
“Have you noticed that people are afraid of Pryrates? That when he comes down from his new chambers in Hjeldin’s Tower people hurry to get out of his way? There is a reason. He is feared because he himself has none of the right kinds of fear. It shows in his eyes.”
Simon put the pen nib to his mouth and chewed, thoughtfully, then took it out again. “Right kinds of fear? What does that mean?”
“There is no such thing as ‘fearless,’ Simon—not unless a man is mad. People who are called fearless are usually just good at hiding it, and that is quite a different thing. Old King John knew fear, and both his sons certainly have known it…I have, too. Pryrates…well, people see that he doesn’t fear or respect the things that the rest of us do. That is often what we mean when we call someone mad.”
Simon found this fascinating. He wasn’t sure that he could believe either Prester John or Elias had ever been afraid, but the subject of Pryrates was itself compelling.
“Is he mad, doctor? How could that be? He is a priest, and one of the king’s counselors.” But Simon remembered the eyes and toothy smile, and knew Morgenes was right.
“Let me put it another way.” Morgenes twined a curl of snowy beard around his finger. “I spoke to you of traps, of searching for knowledge as though hunting an elusive creature. Well, where I and other knowledge-seekers go out to our traps to see what bright beast we may have been lucky enough to capture, Pryrates throws open his door at night and waits to see what comes in.” Morgenes took the quill pen away from Simon, then lifted the sleeve of his robe and dabbed away some of the ink that had smeared on Simon’s cheek. “The problem with Pryrates’ approach,” he continued, “is that if you do not like the beast that comes to call, it is hard—very, very hard—to get the door closed again.”
