Summer King, Winter Fool

by Lisa Goldstein

  Val pulled him closer, got an arm around him, then turned back to the shore. He had come farther out than he thought. Using his free arm, he began to swim wearily toward land.

  Halfway there his leg began to cramp. He nearly cried aloud with the pain. And Dochno had grown heavier; his eyes were closed and he made no effort to dodge the beating of the waves.

  Val struggled against the water again. A wave caught him, filled his mouth with water, pulled him down. He fought his way toward the surface. His chest burned. He gained the surface and breathed deeply.

  “Val!” someone called.

  It’s Sbona, mother of all, he thought. She’s calling me home. I’ll feast in heaven tonight.

  He began to relax. “Val!” He raised his head to look up out of the water; it was the hardest thing he had ever done. Taja sat in one of the fishing boats. She tossed him a net.

  He grasped it. Someone drew him into the boat, and pulled Dochno in after him. He fell like a catch of fish to the bottom of the boat and lay there gasping.

  “Val, you innocent,” Taja said. “We use the boats to go after drowning folk.”

  “I got him, didn’t I?” Val said, and closed his eyes.

  He woke. He was in Pebr’s cottage; they had wrapped him in warm blankets and laid him next to the fire. His clothes were drying on the hearthstones beside him, but he saw that they need not have bothered; the clothes were so tattered that the poorest man in Etrara would not want them now. The ruin of his court finery did not upset him; he had worn them for weeks, having come to Tobol An with nothing else.

  What worried him was the question of who had undressed him. He sat carefully. Pebr stood by the fire.

  “How is Dochno?” Val asked.

  “He’s well, praise the gods,” Pebr said.

  “How did I—What—”

  “Taja and I brought you in, and I undressed you. I never knew one man could wear so many different kinds of clothing. You’ll have to wear my trousers and shirt now, until we can get you to Soria and buy you something new.”

  “Thank you,” Val said. He put his hand to his amulet; it was still there, Callabrion be thanked. He lay back among the blankets, suddenly tired.

  “Good night,” Pebr said. Then, grudgingly, “You were very brave. And perhaps the boats would not have reached him in time.”

  A few weeks later Val found himself talking about Etrara to Taja and Pebr. The three of them had finished their dinner and had drawn closer to the hearth for warmth.

  “The city has seven gates,” Val said. “The Gate of Stones, the Gate of Roses, of Shadows, Fire, Agates, Keys. And God’s Gate, which has been closed since the time of Queen Ellara the Good. Legend says that when she was very old she walked out that gate to meet Callabrion, who had been her lover when she was a young woman. The people of Etrara closed it in mourning for her—they say that no ruler of Etrara since that time has been worthy to walk through God’s Gate.”

  Pebr stirred impatiently. Val had already noticed that the other man didn’t like to hear talk about Etrara. “Callabrion will ascend to heaven this week,” Pebr said, rubbing his thin arms. “Praise the gods—this winter has been the coldest that I can remember.”

  “Praise the gods,” Val said. “How do people in Tobol An celebrate the Feast of the Ascending God?”

  “We—” Pebr said, but Taja laughed and said, interrupting him, “It’s not very exciting. What do you do in Etrara?”

  “We set up a great arena in the palace courtyard,” Val said. “The strongest wrestlers in the city fight one another, and at the end two men who represent Callabrion and Scathiel come out and challenge each other. Callabrion always wins, of course, but sometimes Scathiel gives him a good fight.”

  “We don’t have anything like that,” Taja said. “The children light the bonfires, and then at midnight the priest announces that Callabrion has ascended to heaven and the days will start to get longer. And everyone wishes everyone else good fortune in the coming year and we go off to sleep.”

  “But don’t you want to see Callabrion win the fight?” Val asked.

  “The gods don’t fight in Tobol An,” Pebr said, lighting his pipe. “I told you—we’re a peaceful people here.”

  “They don’t fight? What do they do?”

  “They pass each other on the ladder. Callabrion ascends to wed the goddess Sbona, and Scathiel descends to lose himself on earth, to become the Wandering God. And six months later they change places.”

  Val nodded impatiently. “Of course. But are you saying that Scathiel gives up his place in heaven willingly?”

  Pebr nodded. Smoke plumed around his face. “He misses the earth. He’s anxious to lose himself here among us.”

  Val thought of Arion, and the young duke’s insistence that valor was the chief of the Virtues. And wasn’t there something, well, womanish about the people of Tobol An? Didn’t Gobro’s long peace mean that no one’s mettle would ever be tested, that the brave could never be told apart from the cowardly? The gods would never shrink from a fight, he felt certain of that.

  He had studied courtly politeness for so long that he could not bring himself to say any of this, for fear of insulting his hosts. But Taja must have seen something in his face, because she said, “Why don’t you go back to Etrara for the feast?”

  “I can’t,” he said. Pebr watched him shrewdly; he had to come up with some story. “I’ve taken a vow not to return until I finish my poem.”

  “Well,” Taja said, “you can go in disguise.”

  He looked at her. Why not, after all? Everyone in the city would be masked on the night of the Ascending God, and there would be crowds coming from the provinces and farmlands. He had gotten homespun clothing in the neighboring town of Soria; to the people in Etrara he would be just another rustic.

  What would Narrion say? But there was no way to know; Narrion hadn’t written in the weeks since they’d fled the city.

  “Where would I get a mask?” he asked.

  “We have a few somewhere, don’t we, Uncle?”

  Pebr nodded. He stood and left the room, rubbing his arms, and returned a moment later. “They’re not what you’re used to in the city, I’m sure,” he said, holding out two masks. “We don’t go in much for disguising here.”

  Val took them, disappointed. One had been crudely fashioned out of wood and cloth; he thought it was supposed to be the god Callabrion but it looked more like the pictures of Gobro’s grandfather, a fat man with a face like a toad. The other was even worse, a half-mask made of disintegrating lace and moth-eaten feathers.

  He fitted the wooden mask over his head, thinking with longing of the mask maker he knew on the Street of Apricots. Taja laughed, delighted, and took the other mask from him. Even before she put it on he could see that it was too big for her. It slipped forward immediately, revealing her dark eyes.

  “Here, let me tie it,” Val said. “No one will mistake you for a great lady, you can be certain of that.”

  “Do you mean—Can I come to Etrara with you?”

  He hadn’t meant that at all. Still, why shouldn’t she?

  “No,” Pebr said.

  “Why not?” Taja said. She took off the mask and looked at her uncle. “What are you worried about?”

  “Everything,” Pebr said. “You know nothing about the city, nothing at all.”

  “Then it’s time I learned, isn’t it?” Taja said.

  “I’ll see that no harm comes to her,” Val said.

  “I can take care of myself,” Taja said sharply.

  “Oh no, you can’t,” Pebr said. “I’ll let you go, but only if you stay with Val. Promise me that.”

  Taja looked between Val and Pebr, then nodded slowly. “No one would mistake you for a great lord either,” she said to Val.

  He still had the mask on. Feeling foolish, he lifted it over his head and nodded toward her in a bow. He was a lord, though, if not a great one. That was the difference between them. Or was he? What was a courtier, wit
hout the court to surround him?

  A few days later he and Taja stood in the great courtyard at the palace in Etrara, struggling to keep their footing among the vast numbers of people. The crowd swayed like a tide, pushing a woman in a dress of silk and gauze against him. She looked up, the smile under her velvet half-mask fading as she caught sight of his mask. On his other side he saw Taja step nimbly backward as a torch threatened to set her woolen cloak on fire.

  He had been trying to make his way toward the arena for the last half-hour. The wrestlers hadn’t arrived yet; on the stage acrobats tumbled and balanced on ropes and tossed brands of fire to one another.

  He and Taja had moved near the edge of the crowd now; he could see the golden light rising from the bonfires. The fires and the press of people made him feel almost hot. He welcomed the sensation; this season winter seemed to have lasted for years. All praise to Callabrion, he thought, who would ascend this night.

  He smelled roasting chestnuts and hot cider, heard a group of people singing hymns to Callabrion. A silver mask glimmered in the light from the bonfires, a mask very like the one he had worn to his last banquet in Etrara. The man wearing it was tall and lean, with long dark hair—could that be Narrion? He remembered he had given his cousin the name of the artificer who had made his mask. Could Narrion have had the same idea he had, to come to Etrara in disguise?

  The crowd shifted, moved between him and the other man. He shook his head and turned his attention back to the arena. When would Narrion have had time to commission a mask?

  “We don’t need to see the wrestlers,” Taja said, standing on her toes and shouting to make herself heard over the noise of the crowd. “Let’s see if we can get some roasted chestnuts instead.”

  “Oh, you’re wrong,” Val said. “People in the city wait all year to see these men.”

  She laughed and headed toward the chestnut vendors on the edge of the crowd. She was surprisingly self-possessed for a woman who had never been out of Tobol An in her life, Val thought, and he wondered for a moment what Pebr feared would happen to her.

  They passed a man selling ale, then a woman offering to tell fortunes. The woman was dressed in a black mask and a hood made of black rags; Val thought of the Maegrim and then wondered if he would always be haunted by those grim reminders of fate. But even the Maegrim, he thought, would not dare bring bad news to the Feast of the Ascending God.

  A juggler dropped a wooden spoon at his feet and picked it up, looking sheepish. Taja returned with a paper cone filled with hot chestnuts. The crowd closest to the arena cried out; the wrestlers had arrived. Val looked out over the heads of the people around him.

  The fortuneteller took his hand. Val glanced down quickly and pulled his hand away. “I see a marriage for you soon, my young lord,” the fortuneteller said.

  “I don’t want my fortune told,” he said sharply.

  “Oh, why not?” Taja said. “Tell mine, please.”

  “I’m not finished with this young man,” the woman said. Her voice sounded low, croaking, but something told Val that she was acting, that he might have known her in his earlier life at court. She took his hand again. “You will have great fortune and rise high on the ladder. And you will marry soon—you will marry a woman whose name begins with—begins with T.”

  The mask slipped from Taja’s face. She pushed it back quickly.

  “Callia,” Val said.

  “How did you know?” Duchess Callia said. She sounded disappointed.

  “Tell me how you knew who I was first.”

  “Come, Val—I know all the charming young men at court. You wrote me a sonnet once, don’t you remember? I always thought it was a pity you became so distracted by that actor, that Tamra.”

  “And you wanted me to believe that I’d marry her. That wasn’t very amusing, Callia.”

  “Yes, it was. It would have been, if you hadn’t recognized me. How—”

  “Your voice gave you away. You’re no actor.”

  “I’ll have to study with Tamra, then. But what have you been doing? Something exciting, I hope.”

  How much did she know? She had never been an intimate of the king, her half-brother; she didn’t appear to have heard that Narrion had killed one of Gobro’s favorites. Her ignorance made his role much easier to play. “I’ve been in Tobol An,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “A fishing village on the coast. I became tired of the court—I left to write poetry.”

  “That isn’t very flattering to us.”

  “Oh, I’ll be back.”

  She didn’t seem to have heard him. “Tobol An—that’s where the library is, isn’t it?”

  He nodded, realizing only then how much he had missed the company of the men and women of the court. He had been raised to take his place among them, after all; no wonder he had felt so restless with just Taja and her uncle for company. “Do you know,” he said, “they have the records of everyone’s birth in the library. Everyone’s but mine. I couldn’t find mine anywhere.”

  “Really?” she said. The crowd roared again and she turned in the direction of the noise. One of the wrestlers seemed to have won.

  He had hoped she’d show more interest. Had he lived among dull fisher-folk so long that he had become like them, incapable of courtly conversation? “How’s Gobro?”

  She looked back. “What? Oh, Gobro’s the same as ever.”

  “And the others at court?”

  “Sorry,” Callia said. “Sorry, I think I see someone I know. Good fortune, Val!” She hurried off and was lost in the crowd.

  He looked at Taja. She appeared tired; her mouth, under the half-mask, looked drawn. Perhaps she didn’t know who Callia was; she didn’t seem at all impressed by the duchess, one of the contenders for the throne. “Do you want to go back to the inn?” he asked.

  “No. No, let’s stay. Look—I think they’re starting.”

  She pointed toward the arena. A man wearing the gold and green colors of Callabrion had climbed to the stage and stood facing another wrestler dressed in the blue and silver of Scathiel. An astronomer-priest gave the signal and the two men grappled together.

  The crowd called out encouragement to the Summer God. The wrestlers struggled back and forth across the arena. They had found exceptionally good men this year, Val thought; for a brief and terrifying moment it looked as if the Winter God would triumph. Then Callabrion threw Scathiel to the floor.

  The Winter God lay still. Callabrion stood. A cheer went up from every throat; the man who had played Callabrion was pelted with coins and masks and rare fruit from the tropical south.

  The priest stepped forward and raised his hand. The crowd quieted. The priest looked into the sky. “Look where he comes, the Ascending God!” he called.

  Callabrion had been received into heaven again this year. All around Val the crowd went wild, strangers hugging and kissing and clasping hands. Trumpets blew, and drums answered. The children, on edge from having stayed up so late, ran off screaming to collect the ladders and throw them on the bonfires. Val turned to Taja. “Good fortune, Val,” she said.

  “Good fortune!” he said, hugging her. His luck would change this year, he knew it. He would be called back from his exile; he would return to Etrara.

  They made their way through the crowd. Earlier in the day they had been fortunate enough to find an inn with a few spaces on the floor still free, and they headed toward it. On the streets around them they saw people pouring coins into the outstretched hands of Etrara’s beggars; Scathiel had descended to the earth in the guise of a beggar and could be any one of these ragged men and women. The beggars made the most of it; they would not receive so much bounty for six more months, when Scathiel ascended and Callabrion came to earth to assume the aspect of the Wandering God.

  Val took a sovereign from his purse and pushed it into the hand of an old man. “Good fortune, my young lord,” the man said.

  Lord? How did the man know? “Val!” Taja said urgently.

/>   Val turned. Someone fell into him, punching him hard in the stomach and knocking him to the cobblestoned street. He struggled to rise, to draw breath, to call out. He heard one or two people laugh and realized that no one around him knew what had happened; probably they thought the man drunk on too much excitement and ale.

  The man hit him again. He pushed out with his hands and elbows but the other man had him on the ground now and would not let him up. “So, Val,” the man said.

  “Who—” Val said. He struggled to see his opponent’s face but the mask covered it completely.

  The man reached for the dagger at his belt. Only one arm pinioned Val now; Val twisted and managed to force his opponent to the ground. They had traded places, gods of summer and winter. But the man had drawn his dagger and was pointing it at Val’s throat.

  “Help!” someone said. “Help! Murder! Help!” It was Taja.

  The crowd parted. Hands lifted him from the ground. “The wrestling matches are over, my good lord,” someone said, and one or two people laughed.

  Val stood carefully. He heard the sound of cloth tearing and watched as his opponent ran off into the crowd. His hands shook as he fastened his cloak. He took a deep breath, another. Someone had wanted to kill him.

  “Should we follow him?” someone asked.

  “No,” Val said. His breathing was steadier now. The crowd had closed over the retreating figure. “No, we’ll never be able to find him now.”

  A young man handed him a piece of cloth and he studied it for a moment, but he could make nothing of it save that it was finely woven and dyed. “This came from his cloak?” he asked.

  “Aye, my lord,” the young man said.

  That made the second time someone knew him for one of the nobility. He rubbed his hand wearily over his eyes and realized that his mask had disappeared. “You called the other man ‘my lord,’” he said. “Do you know who he was?”

  “No, but he seemed noble. He wore fine clothes, and rings, and he carried himself like a highborn man. Like you, my lord.” Sometime during this recital the other man had taken in Val’s tattered, homespun clothing and his lack of land-rings, and his voice trailed off doubtfully.