Way of the Wizard

by George R. R. Martin

  The madman walked away from them and checked a variety of tins and broken crockery set out on the rocks.

  “We’ll find some way out of here,” Proctor said. “I s—”

  “Don’t swear to it,” Deborah said.

  Ever the Quaker. It almost made him smile. “I wasn’t going to. I was going to say, I sense magic here, but I haven’t seen him use any yet.”

  “I do too, and neither have I. But we should be on our guard. Remember how the Widow Nance tricked us.”

  “Too well,” he said. The scars on his arms from that misadventure were still pink and healing. “Can you put a binding spell on him if we need to?”

  She opened her hand to reveal several knotted strings. She had been tying them as a focus for a spell. “But not before we find a way off the island.”

  Nearby, the madman sniffed at a cracked pitcher. “This one’s fresh,” he said, carrying it over to a circle of rocks outside his shack. “Rainwater.” He piled up pieces of driftwood and knelt to strike a fire. The crack of flint on steel sounded several times before the spray of tiny orange sparks caught hold in the tinder.

  The steel and flint puzzled Proctor. If the stranger was a wizard why didn’t he just speak a word and start the fire? Everyone had different talents, but anyone who could open this room off the side of world had incredible power. With the fire going, the madman stood and looked around, puzzled. “Now where did I leave those tea leaves?”

  Esek blocked his way. “I know who you are,” he said.

  “I’m sure you don’t,” the madman said. His grin was weak.

  “You’re Henry Every.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Henry Every, Long Ben, Captain of the Fancy.”

  “He’s been dead a long time,” the madman said.

  “He’s been gone a long time,” Esek corrected. “He disappeared, never to be seen again. And now I know where you went and why you’ve never been seen.”

  “I have tea leaves around here, somewhere, I’m sure,” the madman said, as if they hadn’t spoken. He walked away and examined various plates and fragments of bowls that had been left out on the rocks.

  Esek turned to Proctor and Deborah. “Henry Every. I bet you’ve never heard of him either, no more than you’ve heard of Captain Esek Hopkins.”

  “No . . . ” Proctor said. As if he should have heard of every pirate who had ever lived.

  “Should we have?” Deborah asked.

  Esek shook his head in disbelief. He raised one thick arm and pointed it at the shambling wreck of a man who shuffled around the tiny island lifting and sniffing various plates. “Yes, you should have. That man is the greatest pirate who ever lived. He taught Captain Kidd everything he knew, and . . . you haven’t heard of Captain Kidd either, I suppose?”

  “Him, I’ve heard of,” Proctor said. Captain Kidd was a piece of New England history. There wasn’t a boy in Massachusetts who hadn’t heard of him. “Some say he buried his treasure near Boston, and some say in the Thimble Islands.”

  “Captain Kidd sailed through the Thimble Islands,” Esek said. “But it wasn’t to bury his own treasure, it was to dig up Henry Every’s.”

  Proctor saw the gleam of greed in Esek’s eyes, and he exchanged a worried glance with Deborah. One madman was more than enough to deal with if they hoped to escape. He tried to interrupt the smuggler, but now that he had started, there was no slowing him down. He paced, using his arms in excitement as he spoke.

  “Henry Every is the king of the pirates. He sailed the Fancy in the Indian Sea, where he came across the treasure ship of the emperor of Hindoostan. The treasure ship was huge—it had sixty guns and four hundred soldiers onboard. But Long Ben—that’s what his men called him—laid alongside her in the Fancy, crippled her with the cannons, and then boarded her for some of the bloodiest hand-to-hand fighting any man or devil ever seen. The captain of the ship ran down and hid among the whores—”

  Proctor flinched at the harsh word, for Deborah’s sake, though she didn’t show any reaction.

  “When Every’s men finally took the ship, they found more than a million dollars in gold and jewels aboard that ship. Each and every man who survived the battle got a thousand pounds in coins and a sack full of rubies and emeralds and diamonds.” He pounded his fist in his palm. “They were as rich as any gentleman in England, and that’s where most of them went, where the authorities arrested them because the emperor of Hindoostan complained to the King. But not Henry Every. He had friends in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and he came here, where a free man has always been welcome. Then he disappeared.”

  “The women,” Deborah said.

  “What?” Esek seemed confused by her interruption.

  “The whores,” she said. “What happened to them?”

  “What do you think? The pirates took them aboard for their amusement, those that didn’t kill themselves right away and weren’t killed. . . .” Esek realized what he was saying and the sentence stammered to an end. “I’m sorry, miss. I didn’t mean to—”

  “Didn’t mean to what?” Proctor asked.

  “Didn’t mean to speak so freely, I’m sure,” Deborah said. “Though free men should always speak freely, don’t you think?”

  Esek was eager to change the subject. “What I’m trying to tell you is this man is the greatest pirate who ever lived. He stole the treasure ship of Hindoostan and captured all the emperor’s wives. And he got away with it.”

  Proctor looked over his shoulder at the sad raggedy man walking barefoot over the cold wet rocks. “It doesn’t look like he got away with it to me.”

  Esek gestured to Proctor to step aside. “A word between men,” he said.

  “Please feel free,” Deborah said. “I know how men can be . . . delicate sometimes.”

  Proctor stepped aside with the privateer. “Distract Every for me if you can,” Esek said in a hushed tone. “I want to explore that larger island. We need a boat, and there may be one hidden on the far side.”

  “I can do that,” Proctor said.

  “Here we go,” the madman announced cheerfully. Proctor turned to see him grinning as he held up a wooden plate.

  They gathered around the fire.

  “I don’t often acquire fresh tea leaves here, so I have to dry them,” the madman said, scraping them off into the boiling water. “We better let it steep a while.”

  Deborah sat on a nearby rock. When Proctor chose his own seat among the weathered stones, he made sure to choose one so that if the madman were looking at him, his eyes would be turned away from the marble palace.

  “Are you?” Deborah asked.

  “Am I?” the madman said.

  “Are you who he said you are? Henry Every, the pirate captain.”

  He shook his head. “I’m just a poor sinner. A man who’s had a long time to regret a few . . . rash actions.”

  “Is your ship the one that’s been spotted around the Thimble Islands of late?” Proctor said. “Can it sail us back there again?”

  “If it could sail anywhere else, do you think I’d still be here?” Every fidgeted, frequently stirring the leaves in the pot and looking everywhere but never making eye contact.

  “A sinner might still be here, a man with something to repent,” Deborah said.

  “I said I was a sinner, not a saint.” Every stood abruptly and entered his shack. He came back with a tall pipe of the sort that Proctor had sometimes seen used to smoke tobacco. Every sucked at a mouthpiece and then threw it down on the rocks, where it hit with a sharp crack. “Useless. Since the opium has gone, it’s been useless.”

  His voice trembled.

  Proctor was putting all the pieces together. Every wasn’t a wizard: he was cursed, cursed for his piracy and the evil deeds he had done. He could sail his ship back to the other world, but only to taunt him with the things he had lost. “You can sail your ship back to the real world, to our world,” Proctor said. “That’s why we’ve seen your ship so frequently of
late, lurking among the islands. But you can’t stay there. You’re drawn back here, the same way our little boat was drawn through the fog. That’s why they can never find you.”

  “Perhaps,” Every said quietly. With that one word, he seemed to Proctor to become both sad and even worthy of pity. He had four chipped cups, which he dipped into his pitcher of steeping water. “Would you care for some tea? I’m afraid I can offer you neither cream nor sugar.”

  Proctor accepted a cup and tried not to wince when he sipped. The tea was so weak and dirty it tasted like dishwater. Deborah saw his reaction and set her cup down without tasting it. “What happened to you?” Proctor asked.

  “I overheard your friend. He had much of it right. My ship and crew attacked a musselman off the coast of Malabar. It was the moghul’s ship, headed for Mecca, carrying his gift to the imans and his wife and all his concubines on holy pilgrimage. The hold was filled with treasure—chest after chest of gold coins and cut jewels, bolts of silk, blocks of pure opium.” He licked his lips nervously. “But it wasn’t enough. When greed takes a man—when it takes a crew of men—no glut of prizes is ever enough. We tortured the crew members and wom—” He glanced at Deborah. “We tortured the crew members. One by one in search of more treasure. For thirteen days, we made sport of them, forcing them to reveal their secrets, little treasures they may have hidden, on their person or aboard the ship. And on the thirteenth day, we found the greatest treasure of all: the moghul’s sorcerer.” He paused. “He gave up his secrets, but the secrets came with a curse.” He held out his hands. “And now here I am. Have you ever heard the expression ‘to grab a tiger by the tail’? Once you grab hold, you can never let go or they will—hey, your friend really shouldn’t venture over there.”

  He jumped to his feet. Esek dangled from the ropes midway between Every’s island and the island with the palace.

  “He’s our companion, but not our friend,” Proctor said.

  Every didn’t hear a word that Proctor said. He was already running down to shore to shout at Esek.

  Deborah came to Proctor’s side. “Every is an evil man who has done evil things,” Proctor said. “There’s much he’s not telling us, particularly about the emperor’s wives.”

  “I know,” Deborah said. “But his judgment will be up to God, not us.”

  Proctor had a terrible realization. “Unless Esek was right and this is hell.”

  “Don’t think that thought hasn’t crossed my mind,” Deborah said.

  “If this is hell, or even if it isn’t . . . ” Proctor said. He regretted the words as soon as they escaped his mouth. Not knowing how to pull them back in, he opened the stall doors and chased the rest of them out. “I need to know whether . . . ” Whether you love me. He couldn’t make himself say it aloud. “Whether you still have feelings for me.”

  Deborah took a step away from him, her face revealing and then masking a whole book full of emotions he wasn’t literate enough to read. Having grown up as a witch, in a country that killed witches, she was used to keeping her talents secret, a skill that extended to her thoughts. And he couldn’t blame her. But he wanted to know.

  She could tell. She looked up at his face and knew he needed something from her. A word. A sign. She reached out and brushed her fingers against the back of his hand.

  “Ask me again once we’ve escaped this place, wherever it is,” she said. “Until we escape, it doesn’t matter.”

  Every, ragged and miserable, stretched beyond the normal span of days, stood at the edge of the island and raged at Esek.

  “I don’t know,” Proctor said. “If we don’t escape, it may matter even more. Esek told me he would search the big island for a boat.”

  Deborah pointed at the Fancy. “We have a boat. Or rather a ship. Maybe it’s Every who’s drawn back here and not the vessel. If we were aboard it without Every, would you know how to get it under sail?”

  “I might be able to figure it out, given time,” Proctor said. “But even then, I don’t know that I could steer it through these treacherous channels. How would we break the spell that smashes everything on the rocks? How would we open the door back into our world?”

  “I am already thinking of a focus and a spell,” Deborah said.

  He nodded, mind racing, eager to help. “What verse will you use? There’s Job. The gates of death have been opened unto thee. Thou hast seen the doors of the shadow of death.”

  “You’re too fond of the Old Testament,” she said.

  “What do you expect?” he said. “I was raised by Puritans.”

  “I believe this is not hell and we are not yet dead,” she said. “I was thinking about something from Acts: The angel of the Lord by night opened the prison doors and brought them forth.”

  “What can I do to help?”

  The voices of argument rose to a new pitch. “This is the last time I’ll warn you,” Every screamed, froth flying from his lips like spume from the tip of a wave. “If you don’t come back now, I’ll chase you down and cut out your bloody heart.”

  Esek stood on the other island, dripping to the waist. His pistol pointed across the water at Every. “Try it and I’ll finish the job that time did not. You’ve got no claim on a treasure you have not spent in a hundred years, dead man.”

  He shuffled backwards toward to the palace. Every screamed in blind incomprehensible rage, put his knife in his teeth, and reached up to grab the ropelines. Esek laughed at him and turned to run to the palace.

  “Are you sure we need Esek to escape the island?” Deborah asked.

  Proctor looked at the time-worn ship with its puzzle of lines and masts and sails. “Most likely.”

  “Then you better go save him. If you cannot save them both.”

  Every had already reached the far shore where he dropped nimbly to the rocks and chased Esek into the marble palace. Proctor checked the tomahawk, hung at his belt, the only weapon from his militia days that he carried with him. Then he spit on his hands, reached up, and grabbed the ropelines.

  He let his weight hang on the unfamiliar ropes and felt them sag.

  This passage was much wider than the one between the ship and Every’s island, and the drooping ropelines dunked Proctor in the waves until he was soaked halfway to his waist. When he reached the far shore, he saw two sets of wet footprints. Esek’s heavy boots followed by the faint and fading print of Every’s bare feet, converging on the large and ornate archway of the marble palace.

  Proctor paused before it.

  The building itself was wrong. Up close there was no sign of workmanship in the stone, and the ornate details seemed vague and fuzzy whenever he tried to focus on them. It was less a building than it was someone’s memory of a building. And it felt less like a palace and more like a tomb. The finial on the dome was topped with a crescent moon. The real moon, also a crescent, hung in the sky behind it. Proctor realized it had not moved since their arrival.

  The sooner they escaped from here, the better.

  “Esek, Every,” he shouted. “Come on out—we can work through our differences.”

  He heard their voices arguing far away, as if down a long corridor. With a glance back over his shoulder at Deborah, he loosened the tomahawk in his belt, and went inside.

  There were no fires, no candles or lamps of any kind, but the broad interior corridors were suffused with a cool light that emanated from the marble walls. Less like natural light and more like someone’s memory of a lit room. The building was large outside, but certainly not much larger than the Old North Church in Boston. And yet the corridor led him on and on, appearing straight in front of him, though whenever he looked behind it twisted and turned.

  He ignored the side doors and passages as he followed the voices toward the center of the building. Just ahead he spied a transept, a crossing of major corridors. He heard a cough around one of the corners, and he ran forward. “Esek, is that you? Proclaim yourself—”

  The command died on his tongue as he rounded into t
he new hall.

  The tiger stood at his feet, dripping a pool of water on the floor. It stared at Proctor curiously, as if its deep yellow-brown eyes were taking the measure of his soul. It leaned forward and licked the dried blood from the cut on his hand.

  Raspy tongue had barely touched bare skin when Proctor spun away and sprinted into the other hall. He dodged into the first side door that opened for him, and then again into a narrow stairway, which he climbed three steps at a time. Every time he glanced back, he saw shadows moving on the wall and heard the soft pad of feet, until he was running blind, not looking back at all. The corridors were narrower here, and darker, with many more branches, and several of the rooms were dead-ends. He stopped in the third of these, braced himself in a corner, and fumbled at his belt for his tomahawk. He held the weapon before him, twitching in anticipation of an attack that might come at any moment or never.

  After a while, his panic subsided and he caught his breath.

  He was lost. His shifted his feet and felt them squish in wet socks. At first the noise seemed impossibly loud, a trumpet blaring his location. But then he realized it might be his rescue. He dropped to the floor to trace the breadcrumb trail of water drops back to the original entrance.

  Hope faded like dew in the sun. The floors felt unreal, like a plaster model of barely remembered floors. There were no drops to follow, not even in the corner where he’d just been standing. The surface swallowed them up the way sand swallowed water.

  He stood and peered cautiously around each dim corner. He made his way slowly, choosing the wider corridor every time paths diverged, looking for a staircase down to the first floor again. But the labyrinth frustrated him, and he found himself back in the narrowest of hallways which ended in a plain arched doorway. When he looked back, all the other doors and passages were gone.

  He wracked his brain for a verse that he could use as a spell. But all he could think of was First Samuel, And the asses of Kish Saul’s father were lost . . .

  Maybe the only way out was through. He tiptoed forward, as quietly as he could in wet shoes, paused in the door, and peered into the room.