The Book of Athyra

by Steven Brust

  He should cut the strips first, before doing anything else, so he could have them ready. And he’d have to cut the bottom of the sheath. . . . What about the second tube? Oh, yes, there was the sheath for Vlad’s dagger. That was also leather. Would they both fit in the jug?

  He felt an instant’s panic at the thought that he’d dropped the food sack somewhere, but it was sitting next to him, where he’d set it down while he looked at Vlad. He took out the water jug he’d gotten from Tem. Yes, the mouth was good and wide. It would be hard to jam the leather sheaths through the wax plug though, and he’d have to be careful not to push the plug out, or rather in. Well, he had the dagger, he could cut holes in it.

  How much water should be in it? He wished someone would make a jug one could see through. Well, about half-full would be easiest, because then he could be certain that the long sheath was in the water and the short sheath was out of it—or was it supposed to be the other way around? No, that was right: “wound to water, air to air,” Master Wag had said. “Why?” Savn had asked. “Because it works,” the Master had replied.

  Savn went through the entire procedure in his mind, and when he was sure he had it right, he cleared a three-foot circle of ground, gathered a few twigs and leaves and struck a small fire with his own flint an arm’s length from Vlad. He got it going, added a couple of branches, and found a few rocks to set next to it. While they were getting warm, he cut several strips from the bedsheet he’d taken from Tem’s house and set them on the stones.

  The jhereg hovered around, looking interested; Savn tried not to think about them. Vlad seemed greyer. His arms and legs were still moving about without purpose, and he’d shifted his position slightly. The odd angle of his throat seemed to be worse, too. His speech was still unrecognizable. Savn remembered that Master Wag had said something about the heart being crushed if the Cave of the Heart became too small. Savn started working faster.

  The dagger was sharp enough to cut through the leather of the sheaths with little difficulty. Savn made the cuts at an angle, so there was almost a point on them.

  He took another look at Vlad. The process—whatever it was—was accelerating; he could almost see Vlad’s skin getting greyer. “Don’t die,” he said aloud. “Don’t you dare die. You hear me?”

  He took the water jug and made two holes in the plug with the dagger, then widened them as much as he dared. “You just hold on there and breathe, and I’ll fix you up, but if you die I’ll kick you in the head.” He measured the two sheaths against the bottle, and made marks on them with the dagger at the appropriate levels. “Breathe now, you Eastern son of a kethna. Just keep breathing.”

  The smaller of the jhereg watched him raptly. “Okay,” he told it, “here’s the first hard part.” The sword sheath slid into the hole with surprising ease, and the sheath for the dagger just as easily. He held a piece of hot wood near it to melt the wax, then blew on the plug; there was now a water jug with two leather sheaths sticking out of it, looking like the remains of a flower arrangement that hadn’t been very pretty in the first place.

  “Hmmm,” he told the jhereg. “That wasn’t bad. Now for the first test.” He blew into the open end of the sword sheath, and was rewarded by a bubbling sound from the bottle, and the feel of air against his left hand held over the other sheath.

  “Airtight,” he announced to the jhereg. “This might really work. I’m glad he has such well-made stuff.”

  He sat next to the Easterner and put a hand on his chest. Vlad didn’t react to the touch, so maybe he was too far gone to notice what was about to happen. This part was scary, and Savn was afraid that if he hesitated at all, his courage would fail. “Here we go,” he said to the jhereg, and opened up the wound with his fingers.

  The puncture was small but ugly, between the fifth and the sixth ribs, still not bleeding much, but still bubbling and frothing, and making a bubbling sound that ought never to come from a body. The end of the sheath would fit over the puncture easily, but he’d have to get past the outer edge of the wound, which might be too big.

  Savn started to bend the sword sheath, but the bottle almost tipped over. He cursed, let go of the wound, and bent the sword sheath with both hands, putting a kink into it. That would never do.

  He felt himself trembling, and almost gave up the whole idea, but instead he gritted his teeth and played with the position and angle of the bottle until he could draw the long sheath smoothly all the way to the wound with no sharp bends in it.

  Once again he opened the wound with the fingers of his left hand and tried to put the point of the sheath into it. It was a tight fit, and the skin actually tore slightly, but he was able to cover the puncture while wrapping the outer edge of the wound over the sheath. He held it in place as tightly as he could, wishing he had thought of a way to secure it without using his hand. Well, with any luck, Vlad’s skin would provide the seal, and it wouldn’t have to be there long.

  It took a long couple of seconds to bend over to the bottle without changing the position of the sword sheath, but he managed, and, while he had the chance, exhaled.

  Then he put his mouth over the dagger sheath, made sure of the grip of his left hand, and inhaled through the sheath.

  The results were astonishing.

  There was a bubbling sound in the bottle and Vlad gave a twitch; Savn was only barely able to keep the sword sheath in place over the wound. But he held tight, and when he dared to look at the Easterner, he could hardly believe the change. Both sides of his body were now expanding evenly, and his throat was no longer angled so oddly—Savn had thought that even if it worked, it wouldn’t happen so quickly. Since it had, he was suddenly fearful that he’d overdone it somehow, though he didn’t know if that was possible, or what the results would be.

  He wished he’d paid more attention to Vlad’s normal color, but his skin was certainly losing its ashen appearance, and his lips no longer looked blue. He had stopped waving his arms about, and his breathing was deeper and slower.

  “That was quick,” remarked Savn to the jhereg. The smaller one hissed, spread its wings, and was still, which Savn hoped meant that it was pleased.

  The next step, however, was the hard one: sealing the wound without letting Vlad’s lung collapse again.

  His left hand still held the sheath against the wound in Vlad’s side; he increased the pressure as much as he could, and took the dagger into his right hand. One of the jhereg hissed. “Shut up,” he said distractedly. “I’m trying to help him.”

  Manipulating the knife to shave off bits of the wax plug while keeping a firm grip on the wound was perhaps the hardest thing Savn had ever done—he would have been unable to do it at all if he’d had to hurry. As it was, he was concentrating so totally that he hardly noticed when Vlad began speaking again, this time in words, but with no apparent thought behind them. Savn heard him speak but paid no attention.

  When he had a shaving of wax on the flat of the knife, he set it on one of the cloth strips that was resting on the rock near the fire, then went back for another shaving before he could take the time to consider how difficult this really was. He dropped the next one, left it on the ground, and went back for another, which he managed to bring over to the cloth. Then a third.

  That should do it.

  The wax had melted, and what had been a cloth now ought to be an airtight patch. He picked it up by an end and waved it around enough to cool it off.

  “Here it goes,” he told the jhereg. The jhereg watched him mutely.

  Savn held the patch next to the wound, and at as close to the same time as he could, withdrew the makeshift tube and slapped the cloth over it.

  Vlad moaned once, but fortunately didn’t begin thrashing. Savn watched his chest motions, but they never wavered. He held the patch in place and took some of the longer strips to wind them about Vlad’s body.

  One problem that he hadn’t anticipated was how hard it would be to get the cloth under the Easterner’s back while making sure the patc
h didn’t slip from the wound, which would open up the Cavern of the Heart and he’d have to do everything all over again. In the end, he had to let go of the patch for an instant, but fortunately the wax seemed to hold it against Vlad’s skin long enough for Savn to slip the cloth strip under him. He positioned it carefully, then tied it tight around the Easterner’s stomach, making sure it held the patch in place. Then, just to be sure, he wrapped two more strips around Vlad, again making them as tight as he could.

  He let out his breath as if he’d been holding it the entire time, and said, “I don’t believe I did it.” He stood up and staggered over to a nearby tree to rest his back. He noticed that his hands were shaking. That was stupid. Why should they shake now, when everything was all right? Well, it was a good thing they hadn’t been shaking before.

  The smaller jhereg hissed at him angrily. It seemed to be staring intently at Vlad’s left leg, where blood had soaked through his leggings.

  “Oh,” said Savn wearily. “Yes. Well, he can’t be bleeding much, or he’d be dead already.” The jhereg resumed hissing at Savn. He sighed and went back to Vlad, made a slit down his legging and pulled it back to expose the wound, which was still bleeding, though not profusely. He splashed water over it so he could see it better, and because water was always good for keeping the Fever Imps from a wound.

  The small jhereg was staring at Savn, as if waiting to hear the report of his examination. “The seam itself is but shallow,” he said, imitating Master Wag’s tones, “yet the scar will go from his knee to his ankle, and it will take a great deal of cloth to cover it. I hope I have enough,” he added to himself. Then he noticed how bloody the water was, and resolved to find a stream and get clean water as soon as he could.

  Vlad was still talking to himself. Savn made certain his breathing was all right and that his throat looked straight, then set about cutting the rest of the sheet into strips, wondering why his throat had been fixed at that funny angle, and what had caused it to return to normal. He would have to ask the Master about that.

  Master Wag would, no doubt, consider that today had been well-spent in learning his future trade, but Savn had no intention of telling him about it.

  He gave Vlad a last inspection. As far as he could tell, the Easterner would be fine; he’d even stopped mumbling. For a moment Savn just stared at the Easterner, amazed that someone who had been so close to dying a few short minutes before now appeared to be sleeping peacefully, as if nothing at all was wrong with him. He felt unreasonably annoyed, as if Vlad’s apparent health were mocking all the work he’d done. Then he shook his head. “I’ll never understand how people are put together,” he muttered.

  * * *

  She perched in one of the thick lower branches of a friendly maple and watched her mate, waiting for the signal to kill, but it didn’t come.

  She was not unhappy with the battle she’d been in earlier, but when the Provider had been hurt, her mate had screamed as if he’d been the one who was injured. She wished she’d understood what the fight had been about, since no one had seemed interested in eating anyone, but she was used to this. She also wished her mate would decide once and for all whether this soft one below her was a friend or an enemy.

  Her mate continued watching it, and she felt his moods—now suspicion, now amusement, now something not unlike affection—but never a firm decision. She whipped her tail with impatience, but he didn’t notice, and just then she suddenly realized that the Provider was going to live. This surprised her, although she hadn’t been aware of how she knew he was dying, either.

  And at about this same time, her mate suddenly turned, took to the air, and landed beside her.

  Very well, then, they’d let the soft one live. She hoped either it or the Provider would supply some food soon; she was hungry, and she hated hunting.

  10

  I will not marry a wealthy trader,

  I will not marry a wealthy trader,

  He’d keep me now and sell me later.

  Hi-dee hi-dee ho-la!

  Step on out . . .

  SAVN BECAME AWARE THAT the shadows had lengthened, and wondered if he’d fallen asleep, sitting with his back to the tree. Perhaps he had. Everything was very still. He checked Vlad’s breathing, which was all right, then checked the bandage on his leg, which had soaked through. He removed it and inspected the wound. It was no longer bleeding, at any rate—or, rather, it hadn’t been bleeding until he removed the bandage. He knew there was a way to take bandages off without starting the wound to bleeding again, but he couldn’t remember what it was. It annoyed him that he could have managed something as tricky as getting Veld’s lungs working again but couldn’t remember how to treat a wound.

  But he cleaned it once more, using the water sparingly, then wrapped it in what remained of Tem’s fine cloth bedsheet. He noticed again how bloody the water looked, and wondered if it really mattered; it was, after all, Vlad’s own blood; perhaps it was good for him.

  He leaned against the tree again. He wondered if he ought to go to Master Wag’s where he was expected, but he didn’t want to leave Vlad alone; he preferred not to take any chances on someone or something, by accident or design, undoing all of his work.

  As this thought formed, he realized that he felt rather fine; he had managed a very difficult procedure under far from ideal conditions, in spite of having only the vaguest idea of what the problem was, much less the solution. He looked at Vlad and smiled, then looked at the two jhereg, who were now seated next to each other on the ground, their wings folded.

  “I feel like I can do anything,” he told them.

  The smaller one looked at him for a moment, then curled around and rested its head on its neck, looking at Vlad. What was the relationship between Vlad and the jhereg? It had something to do with witchcraft, he knew, but what was it exactly? Would he ever know? Would he ever be enough of a witch to do such things himself?

  Why not?

  If he could save a man’s life with a jug of water and two pieces of leather, he ought to be able to perform spells, especially after everything he’d been shown. He remembered that odd state of mind, which felt like a dream, but where his thoughts were sharper than being awake—distant, but present. Why shouldn’t he be able to get there himself? He remembered how Vlad had done it; he should be able to do it on his own.

  He leaned back against the tree, pretending he was sinking into it. Slowly, methodically, he took himself through the procedure that Vlad had shown him, relaxing his head, neck, shoulder, arms, and every other part of his body. By the time he reached the soles of his feet, he felt curiously lethargic—he knew he could move if he wanted to, but he didn’t want to; he was held motionless by his own will. It was an odd feeling, but not quite what he wanted.

  Sink, he told himself. Back into the tree, down into the ground. Feel heavy. I am a beam of light, and empty, and I will travel in and down. I am heavy, so I will fall. There are steps that lead into the tree, past its roots. I will take each, one at a time, and with each step, I will go deeper. And, almost to his surprise, it worked—he felt light as air, heavy as stone; his vision was as intense as a dream, yet he could control it.

  He was very aware of his own breathing, of the sounds of the small, scurrying animals around him, of the light through his eyelids. He wished to remove himself from all of these things that were part of his world, so: Again, deeper. Deeper. Draw in and down.

  Savn imagined his body sinking further through the dirt and the clay and the stone, and with each layer, he became more distant from himself, from Vlad, from the world he knew. He was aware of controlling his descent, and so he gave up the control, and drifted.

  Falling through the ground to the spaces beneath, alone, spinning in place, seeing without eyes, walking without legs, coming to an emptiness where emotion is pale and translucent, and sensations are the fog through which thoughts are observed. He regarded himself, reflected in narrow seclusion, and realized that, in fact, he was not alone, had never b
een alone. His sister, his mother, his father, Master Wag—they slowly spun around him, looking away; his own gaze retreated and advanced, went past them all, past his friends, past the Easterner.

  He created a vast forest to walk through—a forest the like of which he’d never seen, where the trees rubbed shoulders and their tall, thick branches created a roof. At his feet was a large silver goblet. He picked it up and carried it with him for a while, enjoying the coolness he imagined against his fingers. Or did he imagine it?

  There was a break in the forest, a clearing, and tall grasses grew there. He was barefoot now, and he loved the way the grass felt between his toes. In the center of the clearing was a pond of clear water. He dipped his goblet into it, and drank. It was very cold, yet he knew that he could dive in and it would be as warm as a spring afternoon. He thought of doing so, but now was not the time.

  He walked on, and before him was a high stone wall. In the way of dreams, it had appeared before him with no warning, stretching out to the sides forever, and towering high above him. For a moment he quailed, as if it were a threat rather than an obstacle, but he thought, This is my dream, I can do as I will.

  And so he took to the sky, like a jhereg, circling once, then up, past the wall and out over the chasm of the future, into which he could climb or jump, the choice arbitrary but full of significance.

  Like a jhereg?

  There was a jhereg there—no, two of them—flying about over and under him, saying, Isn’t it grand to fly to fly to fly? But now you must choose must choose must choose.

  It annoyed him, to be told what he had to do by jhereg, so he refused to choose, but instead continued once he was over the wall, continued aloft, light as the air, warmed by the winds of chance, until the burden of his own power threatened to pull him down.

  “I need wings,” he said to the emptiness below him.

  “No,” said a voice which he did not recognize. “You are wings. You do not fly, you are flight.”

  The surprise of hearing a voice where nothing could exist outside of his will was buffered by the words themselves—What did it mean to be flight? He was now wrapped in the dream fabric he had created, and in his confusion chasm and world disappeared, leaving him bodiless and nowhere, yet he scarcely noticed, for the sensation of flight never left, which, he realized suddenly, was the answer.