The Book of Athyra

by Steven Brust

  There was a heavy step behind him, and he turned and saw one of the soldiers he’d noticed earlier, now holding his sword and charging through the door, directly at Savn.

  No, he realized suddenly, at Vlad.

  Savn never remembered deciding to get out of the way, but somehow he was against the counter, watching more soldiers enter the door. They stepped over the body of the first one—Savn had not seen what happened to him—and Savn realized the scream in his ears had come from his sister.

  He looked back at Vlad, who was now standing on a table, holding a sword in his right hand, and swinging what looked like a gold chain in his left. The sight of the Easterner’s shiny black boots on top of Tem’s table imprinted itself on Savn’s memory and brought back older memories, of a dancer who had come through town a long, long time ago.

  There came a splash of red on the boots, and Savn’s eyes traveled up Vlad’s body until he was aware of an ugly slash along the Easterner’s side. He didn’t know how he’d gotten it. He also saw one of the soldiers writhing on the floor, and there was the glint of steel reflecting the lamps on Tem’s walls.

  Somewhere, far from Savn’s conscious thoughts, he was aware of Tem and his guests all scampering out of the way through doors and windows, but this seemed unimportant; Savn, unable or unwilling to move, stared at the scene before him.

  For just an instant, he was able to watch the swordplay, three soldiers against the Easterner, all four blades slicing, thrusting, and whirling as if they went through the movements of a beautiful, terrible dance, and when one slipped through and struck Vlad deeply in the upper thigh, that, too, was planned and necessary.

  The illusion shattered when Vlad suddenly teetered and fell, amid tables and chairs. At the same time, one of the soldiers fell back and turned around. At first, Savn thought the man’s hand had been injured, and then Savn realized that the man was clutching his throat, which had been horribly cut open. He watched the man fall, and felt ill.

  And two familiar, winged shapes flew into the room and struck at the backs of the two soldiers who still stood, and two more soldiers came in from the back of the room.

  Savn remembered thinking very clearly, Well, if I had any doubts about the jhereg, this should settle them.

  There was an instant that was filled with swords flailing against the air, and then it all stopped, and the two jhereg flew back out the door.

  One of the soldiers said, “Where did he go?”

  Another said, “Get the healer!”

  Another said, “It’s too late for Tevitt.”

  Savn stared at the place where Vlad had been, and where now there were only reddish stains; then, without a thought for the injured soldiers or his terrified sister, he turned and fled out the door. He ran around to the back of Tem’s house and hid behind the stables, trembling.

  9

  I will not marry a starving painter,

  I will not marry a starving painter,

  I’d get skinny and just grow fainter.

  Hi-dee hi-dee ho-la!

  Step on out . . .

  SAVN HEARD THE HEAVY tramp of feet leaving Tem’s house. He waited a little longer to be sure, then made his way back inside. Polyi sat where she had been, looking awestruck and slightly ill. There were no injured or dead in sight, but Tem was already cleaning the floor where blood had been spilled.

  He sat down next to Polyi and noticed that his hand was shaking. He put it on his lap under the table. She said, “Aren’t you late for going to Master Wag’s?” as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

  “I guess so,” he said.

  After a moment, she said, “Why did you run out?”

  “I was too frightened to stay,” he said.

  “Oh. Me, too.”

  “Then why didn’t you run out?”

  “I was too frightened to move.”

  “Are you all right now?”

  “I think so. I’m shaking.”

  “Me, too.”

  He noticed that several people had come in, attracted to the scene of the excitement by some magic he didn’t understand. They were talking in low tones, and pointing to the overturned tables and chairs that Tem was in the process of straightening.

  “You should go home,” said Savn.

  “I will,” said Polyi. “Are you going to Master Wag’s?”

  “Yes, I—I’m not certain. I just want to sit here for a moment.”

  Polyi’s eyes widened suddenly. “I can’t wait to tell Slee about this.” Before Savn could say anything, even if he’d thought of something to say, she was up and out of the door, running.

  Savn considered what he wanted to do. Master Wag was expecting him, but Vlad was out there somewhere, hurt. But there was no way to find Vlad, even if he wanted to.

  After a moment of thinking, he went up to Tem, who had finished cleaning the floor. He asked Tem for some food, which he put into a large sack that Tem supplied. Tem didn’t seem curious about what Savn wanted these for, or maybe the Housemaster, too, was so stunned by what had happened that he wasn’t thinking clearly. Savn got a large jug of water, sealed with a wax plug, and put it into the sack with the food, working it down to the bottom so it wouldn’t crush everything else.

  He slipped into the back and found an empty bedchamber, from which he removed a towel, a sheet, and a blanket. Vlad would be able to pay Tem back for these, if . . .

  He went out the back way, and wondered where to begin looking. Vlad had certainly teleported, and done so faster than Savn had thought possible. How long had it taken? In fact, he didn’t know; everything had happened so fast. But it was certainly much quicker than it had before.

  What was it he had said? Something about if you were in a hurry . . . Yes, it was about setting up a place to teleport to, which could be anywhere; there was no way to know—

  He suddenly remembered his first sight of the Easterner, standing next to the Curving Stone, making lines on the ground with a dagger.

  But he had said that was witchcraft.

  But he was certainly capable of lying.

  Savn began running down the Manor Road, convinced he knew where Vlad was. As he ran, he realized that he had no idea why he was going to all of this trouble, and he wondered, too, about the heavy sack in his hand, which was making running so tiring as it bumped against his hip. He shifted it to his other hand and slung it over his shoulder as he reached the top of the hill and started down the long, bending road that led to the Curving Stone.

  Why am I doing this? he wondered, and the answer came as quickly as he’d formed the question.

  If he ignored Vlad, he’d never learn anything more, and what he’d learned felt like a door that had opened just enough to let him see that on the other side was a place he desperately wanted to visit, maybe even to live. And he knew he would always berate himself for cowardice if he let himself be driven away from the Easterner.

  He could try to sneak around, and still spend time with Vlad without being seen, but that didn’t feel right either, and he suspected that he wasn’t much good at sneaking around. And to be found out would be worse than being openly seen with him.

  But if he continued associating with the Easterner, how would he continue to live here? There wouldn’t always be friendly jhereg to—

  He shook his head, shying away from wondering how it had happened that, just when he faced being beaten by his friends, out of nowhere there came . . . No. He didn’t want to think about it, not yet.

  And so, naturally, it was just then that he noticed a rustling in the trees overhead, and, yes, of course there were two jhereg, arrogantly sitting in the branches, almost as if they were watching him. He stopped abruptly and stared back at them.

  They were the same size and color as the two he had seen—when was it? He’d been walking with Polyi, and then he’d gone to Master Wag’s, which was the day Dame Sullen’s arm had been broken, so that would be . . .

  The same day Vlad had shown up.

  They were t
he same two, of course; it was silly to try to deny it. The same two who had rescued him, and who had rescued Vlad, and who he’d been seeing, again and again, since Vlad had appeared. Maybe it had even been one of them that had been sitting on the roof of Tem’s house, listening in on everything that was said.

  He tore his gaze away and covered the remaining twenty or thirty feet to the Curving Stone, breathing hard, and looked for traces of blood on the ground. He found them right where he expected; large red splotches.

  Where had the Easterner gone? He tried to find a trail of blood, but there didn’t seem to be one.

  He turned back to the jhereg, who were still watching him. If he spoke to them, could they understand him? Of course not. He frowned.

  “Well?” he said aloud. “What do you want? Why are you following me?” He swallowed, hearing the echo of strain in his own voice. In the back of his head he heard Master Wag talking about hysteria. The jhereg stared back at him impassively. He shut his eyes, took a deep breath, and opened his eyes again. He spoke again, this time slowly and carefully. “I’ve brought food for him. Where is he?”

  The smaller of the two jhereg spread its wings, then refolded them, looking hesitant. When folded and seen from the side, each wing formed an almost perfect triangle, as if nature had intended to give the beast a shield against the arrows of men. Yet seen from the front, it looked like there was a snake’s head bobbing up and down between the walls of two houses that had been built too close together.

  It spread its wings again, and this time left its perch. It dropped just a little until it caught the air, and then rose quickly and flew over Savn’s head. Its mate followed it, and Savn turned to watch them fly.

  They made a high circle, climbing until he thought they were going to vanish into the overcast; then they flew back down so quickly he thought they were about to attack him, but they landed some distance away. He could barely see them through the trees—about forty feet from the road.

  Savn plunged into the thicket after them. Just below the tree in which they rested he almost tripped over the Easterner’s sword; no doubt Vlad had dropped it as he’d stumbled along. He picked it up by the hilt, noticing that the blade was still stained with blood. He wondered what it was like to hit someone with it. His musings were interrupted by a hiss from one of the jhereg. He jumped, startled. They were, apparently, impatient for him to find Vlad.

  Very well, then. He looked further ahead, and at once saw a dark object, not far away at all, that looked like it didn’t belong. A few steps closer and he realized that it was the bottom of Vlad’s boot, toe pointed toward the sky.

  Savn knew, even before he reached Vlad, that the Easterner was alive, because his breathing was obvious—quick and shallow. Breathing like that meant something, he knew, but he couldn’t remember what. Or maybe there were several things it could mean. Was it blood loss? It wasn’t a concussion, he was sure of that. It occurred to Savn that one of Vlad’s lungs might have been punctured, in which case he’d be unable to do anything except watch the Easterner die.

  Savn came up next to him, knelt down, and studied his face, seeing at once that his skin had an odd grey tint and that his lips were blue, and, in fact, so were his eyelids and ear lobes. The colors meant something; he was sure of it. Savn shook his head and thought, He’s dying.

  And so he seemed to be. Not only did his lung appear punctured, but it looked like his neck had been broken—the veins and the windpipe stuck out horribly from the throat, and at a funny angle, down toward the Easterner’s left side.

  He was muttering as well, but only incoherent sounds, grunts and squeaks, as if his ability to make words were gone. His arms and torso were moving weakly, and without any apparent purpose. A terrible sorrow filled Savn—he was convinced that Master Wag would be able to heal him, punctured lung and broken neck or not, but Savn himself just didn’t know enough. If Master Wag were here, he’d . . .

  Savn frowned. If Vlad’s neck was broken, could he move about like that? Savn tried to think of what the Master had said about such injuries, but he couldn’t remember hearing about them. The Master had spoken about the neck as the stream that fed the mind, and that if the spine were severed, the brain would starve from want of thoughts. Maybe this was what he meant; this was what a body did when there were no thoughts to guide its actions. It was horrible.

  And then, as if to underline the ghastly sight, Vlad’s delirious babbling ceased long enough for Savn to hear an awful sucking, bubbling sound that came from somewhere on his body.

  As Vlad began mumbling again, Savn wondered what could cause the sucking noise. If the lungs had been pierced, that might account for a wheezing, but would the escaping air sound like that? Probably, he decided. But still . . .

  There was a dagger at Vlad’s belt. He removed it and one of the jhereg hissed at him.

  “Shut up,” said Savn abstractedly. He cut open Vlad’s jerkin down the middle and pulled it aside, exposing a chest full of dark, curly hairs. Was that normal for Easterners? He didn’t stop to give it further thought, because he saw the wound at once—about halfway down on Vlad’s right side. There wasn’t all that much blood—Savn almost wished there were more, so that he wouldn’t have to look at the pink tissue that was lying open—but what there was of the escaping blood bubbled and frothed.

  Vlad’s breath was still coming rapidly, and was very shallow. Oddly, though, only one side of his chest—the left side, away from the wound—was rising and falling. And what bothered Savn most about the queer chest movement was that he’d seen or heard of such a thing before.

  Where? When?

  He looked at Vlad’s face once more; it was grey, but seemed no more so than it had a moment before. He looked again at Vlad’s chest, watching the left side rising and falling rapidly, while the right side hardly moved. It was familiar, and it wasn’t. He closed his eyes, and tried to recall Master Wag’s words.

  “I found it because I was looking for it. It isn’t the sort of thing you can see easily. . . .”

  That couldn’t be it, because it was easy to see.

  “I was looking for it because I found the broken rib. And I found the broken rib because it was hit in the side.”

  Wait, though. “It”?

  “. . . the sort of thing you can see easily in a pig.” Yes! Cowler’s stud-hog, butted by their goat. Cowler had spent ten minutes on his knees begging Master Wag to look at it, because Birther was off somewhere, and Master Wag had finally agreed only because he thought Savn might be able to learn something useful. “We’re a lot like pigs, inside, Savn,” he’d said, and refused to make any jest on the subject. Yes.

  Vlad was still mumbling. Savn tried to ignore him and remember what the Master had said. It hadn’t been that long ago. “. . . knocked a hole in the Cave of the Heart, so the lung collapsed . . . no, not the heart, the Cave of the Heart, where the heart and the lungs live. Same thing can happen to a man, you know. You’ll learn about that some day. Now, go fetch a bottle with a plug, and you’ll learn what I can do with a couple of reeds. Good thing this was a hog; they have the same sort of lungs we have, which I told you half an hour ago, though you probably weren’t listening, as usual. You’ll learn about that, too, someday. Run along now, before this smelly beast up and dies and makes a fool of me.”

  The procedure came back to him, and with the memory came the fading of hope. He had the water, which he’d brought for Vlad to drink and to repel the Imps of Fever from the wound, and there was even a wax plug in it, but he had no reed, nor anything that could be used as one; none of the plants that grew around here were both hollow and wide enough to work, and it would take hours to reach the river and return. Vlad didn’t look like he would live for hours.

  He glanced at the sword which he’d dropped next to Vlad. If it was hollow, it would be perfect; long and flexible . . .

  He stared at the empty sheath at Vlad’s hip. How well-made was it? Savn had drunk from leather flagons; leather could certainly be mad
e watertight.

  He had to hurry, but there was still time for thought. He’d waste less time if he figured out what he had to do, every step, before he did anything else. Finding the sheath was enough to give him hope; he began to think that everything he needed was here if he could just find it; what he had to do was get it right the first time. How could he make the puncture? No, he didn’t have to; the sword that had cut Vlad had made a fine puncture; all he had to do was to seal it up while he was working on it, and then again afterwards. How?

  Well, for the first step, his hand would do well enough, but how about later? The sheet he’d taken from Tem’s house certainly wasn’t airtight; could it be made so? Was something that was watertight also airtight? It had to be; how could air get through if water couldn’t? Well then, if he could find a candle, he could melt wax onto the cloth from the sheet.

  He took Vlad’s belt off, found his belt pouch, dumped it out, and looked at the contents. There was a piece of flint (why would a sorcerer need flint?), a few odd-looking sewing-needles (but no thread), a few scraps of paper, a purse with several gold coins in it as well as some silver, a bit of wire, a few small clay vials of the kind that Master Wag kept potions in, but no candles. Well, that made sense, why would a sorcerer need a candle? Then he frowned . . . the wax plug on the water bottle? He’d have to melt it, but it might work. So he’d need a fire. Okay, there was plenty of wood around, and he could set the cloth near the fire, and then cut shavings from the plug and set them on top of the cloth where they could melt and make an airtight seal to put over the wound; it wouldn’t have to be very big; the wound itself was less than an inch wide.