Helm

by Steven Gould

  Moments later, the crowd in front of the high seat parted. At first he didn’t recognize the figure that walked toward him. The great bonfire had died to embers so torches and ringlight were all that lit the festival field. The steward could see that the man was small and walked stiffly, almost unnaturally. Then the figure stepped nearer one of the torches and Dulan caught a glimpse of a blood-streaked shirt and a coiled rope draped awkwardly across one shoulder. Another step closer to the torch and the figure’s head seemed to catch fire as the gleaming headgear he wore caught the torchlight and threw it at Dulan.

  He staggered as if hit. The Helm! His hands went automatically to his own temples, to the crescents hidden beneath his hair. Then, and only then, did he recognize his youngest son, standing rigidly before him, swaying slightly, staring fixedly at Dulan with a face empty of expression.

  Dulan stepped forward. “What have you done?” He shouted the question with anguish in his voice. Those nearby stared in shock, for Guide Dulan had last been heard to raise his voice the day his wife had died. His calm was legendary.

  Leland blinked, then slowly shook his head as if befuddled. Slowly, clumsily, he raised his arms and lifted the Glass Helm from his head. As he did, a tremor passed through his body and he collapsed full length across the trampled grass. The Glass Helm bounced once on the ground and rolled to a stop at his father’s feet.

  Dulan’s question went unanswered.

  For three days Leland lay unconscious in the confines of his room, attended always by one of the Laals or Guide Malcom. The servants’ gossip was full of the tale of Leland’s climb. By the first evening, the exact extent of Leland’s injuries was known by the youngest kitchener, from his torn and bloody fingers to the half-circle burns on his temples, where the Glass Helm had marked him.

  “I’ve never seen the guide look like this. I don’t think he’s slept in two days—he just sits in his study and stares out at the mountains,” Captain Koss told Bartholomew, the kitchen manager. “Even at the battle of Atten Falls, with Noramland’s army in pieces and the Rootless pouring across the river, he exuded confidence. You’d have thought it was a picnic. It scares me to see him like this.”

  Bartholomew smiled at the thought of Captain Koss scared of anything but said, “As one ages, cares aren’t handled as well.”

  From Dulan’s study window, the Needle was a finger pointed at the sky rising from behind a green hill. He stared unseeingly at it and brooded.

  Damn it all to hell, he thought. Two decades of charging wasted! Why, oh why, Leland? Dillan was going to be ready soon, I could feel it. But not now, not for twenty more years, if the house survives that long. If civilization lasts that long!

  Leland, oh, Leland. You were a treasure to me. A child of love without worry of utility or station. You were there for me to treasure as a child and a son—not a weapon I must hone, a tool I must shape.

  Dulan grieved. He grieved for himself. He grieved for Dillan, his eldest. He grieved for Lil, his late wife. But most of all, he grieved for Leland.

  I hope you can survive the forging!

  There was also much speculation as to the nature of the Glass Helm. Guide Dulan himself placed it on a helmet stand beside Leland’s bed, where it sat lifeless, lusterless, and cloudy. He bound it in place with wire and sealed it with wax and his signet.

  “Undoubtedly magic,” Sven the junior kitchener assured his peers. “How else would the weakling have made it up the Needle if not assisted by sorcery?”

  “Fah! He’s strange, but he’s no weakling. He worked the full harvest in the fields, and it was no sham. I saw him sweat. You have magic on the brain.”

  “Sure I do. That’s why he lies in a trance.”

  “Listen, twit. If I’d climbed the Needle, though I doubt I could, I might sleep for three days myself!”

  Sven laughed harshly. “And the exertion would leave the demon brands on your temples, too?”

  There was no answer to that.

  On the fourth day, the patient opened his eyes and stared blankly at Guide Malcom. “Uncle Malcom?” he croaked, intelligence returning to his eyes.

  “Yes, Leland. Here, drink some of this.”

  Leland tasted it and made a face, then he saw the Helm on the table beside him.

  His eyes widened. “It wasn’t a dream, was it?”

  “No,” said Malcom, “definitely not.”

  A haunted look came to Leland’s eyes. “It put something in my head.” He touched his hair gingerly.

  “What sort of something?” Malcom asked.

  The haunted look became one of frustration and pain. “I don’t know! I can feel it in there, but it’s all dark. I can’t get a hold of it.”

  “Don’t try. Don’t let it bother you. Don’t even try to think. Drink.”

  After the boy sipped half of the offered medicine, Malcom went to the door and sent a servant for the steward. Scant seconds passed before he arrived.

  “So you’re going to live, eh?” Dulan’s first words as he came into the room were spoken forcefully, without a hint of kindness. Leland’s tentative smile died before it touched his lips and his face froze to stony immobility.

  Dulan went on. “You have a month to recover your health. One month—no more. And then, my fine climber of rock, you’re going to wish you’d never been higher than your head. When I’m done with you, you’ll probably wish you’d never been born!”

  Chapter 2

  RENSHU: REN (REPEAT) SHU (LEARN) OR LEARN BY REPEATING

  Leland shoveled snow. He shoveled great quantities of snow. And ice. And occasionally refuse from the kitchen. Twelve hours a day, seven days a week. Oh, well. Last month it had been manure, as his father had him handle the output of every domesticated animal in Laal Station. At least snow didn’t stink.

  He was clearing the walkway on the east wall today, trying to ease his shovel loads of snow over the outer wall without the stiff wind flinging it back in his face. Ice rimmed the hood of his coat and coated the outside of his scarf where it passed across his mouth. But though the wind and minute flying crystals stung his exposed skin, he was warm enough in his exertion.

  As always, his mind worked, prodding and prying at the dark and confusing mass of half-seen knowledge locked in the back of his mind. Sometimes, during the six hours he was allowed to sleep, he dreamed of amazing things—steel towers large as the Needle rising into the sky on glowing pillars of blue light. And once he’d seen the ring as if they circled another planet—not the one he was on.

  Pain exploded from his shoulder and he found himself falling forward into the snow. Damn, damn, damn. Will I never learn? He rolled heavily to the side and the bamboo cane fell again to rap painfully across his shins. Leland scrambled back and stood facing his assailant. “Hello, Dexter. So it’s your turn today, eh?”

  Leland’s brother stood rigidly in the snow, leaning on the bamboo cane thoughtfully. He seemed about to say something, but Leland held up his hand. “No. Don’t say anything—you know you’re not supposed to. And don’t shuffle your feet to try to warn me like you did last time. That only makes me careless and gets me beaten twice as hard when Anthony has the cane. He enjoys it.”

  Dexter pulled his hood closer about his head and tucked the bamboo under his arm. Then, with a curt nod, he turned away and walked back toward warmth and light and brothers he was allowed to talk to.

  Leland stared blankly after him and rubbed his shoulder.

  Dexter hung his coat with others by the door to the Great Hall, then put the bamboo behind it, leaning against the stone wall. As he entered the large room, he noticed that he kept rubbing his hands against his shirt as if trying to clean them off. He stopped himself, clenched his fists, and looked around the room.

  Anthony and Dillan were standing before the fire, talking quietly. Lillian and Guide Bridgett were seated on lounges beneath a double-paned window, where the light was strongest, playing cards. A few tradesmen were meeting in a corner, a practice encouraged by Guide
Dulan.

  Father has an inordinate interest in successful trade, Dexter thought. Not like the guardianship in Noramland proper who’d as soon spit on a tradesman as talk to him. He smiled in their direction and nodded. They waved briefly and continued their bargaining. The attitude pays off. They’ve swarmed to Laal from Noramland since Arthur de Noram took the high seat. His tax on craftsmen was the last straw. Dexter shook his head in admiration. The Laal treasury was fuller than it had been for years, and just from a one-in-twenty tax across the board—no favorites. In Noramland and Cotswold, taxes reached eight in twenty for richer craftsman and the settled landowners. And their treasuries were getting smaller. There was no doubt about it, Guide Dulan had a good reason for his every action.

  So why the hell is he making us treat Leland this way?

  He walked over to Anthony and Dillan and stamped his feet by the fire. Snow fell from his boots and began melting on the hearth. Dillan looked sideways at him, his eyebrows raised in question.

  “Number-one attack of the day accomplished.” He paused. “Five more to go.”

  Dillan’s eyes widened. “Six in all? That’s double the number he’s been requiring!”

  “Yes, he changed it this morning,” Dexter said, but he was looking at Anthony. He didn’t like the half smile on Anthony’s face. He spat in the fireplace. “So, Anthony, it’s true—you do enjoy it.”

  Anthony looked startled. “Enjoy it?” He stared into the fire, then lifted his eyes challengingly back up to Dexter’s. “In a perverse fashion, I suppose I do, but mostly because he makes me so angry.”

  “Father?” asked Dillan.

  “No, Leland! I started out light enough, but he just took it—didn’t fight back, didn’t whimper, didn’t cry out. So I figured I must be doing it too lightly. So I started hitting him harder, more often at each attack. He reacts the same way. Nothing, no matter how hard I hit him. Oh, he scrambles quick enough to get away, and I’ve seen him limp out some mornings, barely able to move after I’ve beaten him, but still no reaction to the pain. He just stares at me with those green eyes of his and doesn’t make a sound.

  “It’s a test of will, and I’m going to win it.”

  Dillan’s eyes met Dexter’s and, as one, they shook their heads.

  In early spring Leland worked in the new fields, walking the irrigation waterwheels, moving rocks to build terrace walls.

  At least this was better than working in snow that muffled footsteps. Now he could hear them coming with the cane and dodge. On the other hand, he was wearing less clothing and the blows that did land hurt more.

  There were nights without sleep, as bruised muscles wracked him with pain. Meals lost every morning as the anxiety of facing another day of beatings sent him vomiting to the privies. Meals not touched from exhaustion, pain, or nausea. Leland grew thin and haggard. His skin became sallow, hollows appeared under his eyes, and lines appeared at the corners of his mouth—lines that shouldn’t have been on a seventeen-year-old’s mouth.

  For a time he became a shambling scarecrow of a human, stumbling to the tasks assigned him and cringing inwardly every time the cane fell, always from an unexpected quarter.

  Then he changed. One evening he went from hopelessness to curiosity. The cause of his downfall in some small way became his salvation.

  First, he asked, Can I avoid the blows? So he tried, and fewer blows landed.

  Then he asked, Should I avoid the blows?

  He couldn’t think of a reason not to avoid them, and several reasons he should.

  Even fewer blows landed.

  His appetite improved and, though he didn’t gain much weight, he became quicker, more agile.

  Sometimes, to make Anthony mad, he’d stand perfectly still until the last moment—then sidestep the blow and dance away. Invariably this would result in more pain later, but he gained a certain grim satisfaction from it.

  At night he would read in the kitchen while he ate. To the rest of the family and most of the servants, he was a pariah. Bartholomew was the only one allowed to talk to him, both because he saw to Leland’s feeding and because he passed on Guide Dulan’s latest whims of labor.

  One night Bartholomew pushed his glasses down his nose and peered over them at Leland’s small table. They were alone in the corner of the huge main kitchen, where Bartholomew had his desk and kept track of the enormous quantities of food necessary to feed his charges. “Tell me, young Leland. What are you thinking about your father?”

  Leland stared at him. Bartholomew would tell all the gossip that passed in the castle but had always shied away from discussing his father’s motives. He placed a marker in the text he was reading, Practical Medicine, and carefully set it to the side.

  “I don’t know what to think about him. The man won’t even talk to me. How can I think anything?”

  “Well, what do you feel?”

  Leland laughed, but it was a harsh sound, verging on bitterness. “Don’t ask. Don’t ask. The man has loved me all my life—everything a father should be. Then he turns on me. But I did something he had expressly forbidden. No matter what I feel about the last six months, I should remember the first seventeen years.”

  Bartholomew leaned back. “You must hate him.”

  Leland put his face in his hands and said miserably, “I don’t know!” He didn’t see Bartholomew’s smile of satisfaction.

  In late spring, High Steward Arthur de Noram, ruler of greater Noramland, visited Laal en route to Cotswold. He was traveling there for peace talks with High Steward Siegfried Montrose, who had been raiding Laal’s borders and those of the other Noramland stewardships. It was hoped that Arthur could win an end to hostilities on Noramland’s southern border so he could concentrate on his annual war with Nullarbor, to the east.

  Leland wouldn’t have noticed the visit except Bartholomew was too busy to talk to him. The high steward traveled with an entourage of seventy-five. Leland found himself ignored by his father and actually had time on his hands. So one morning he put a chair in the back of the library, in a corner hidden by the shelves, and read beneath a sunny window.

  Most of the books in the library predated the Founding. They were made of near-indestructible materials—pages thin as gossamer yet untearable, waterproof, fade-proof. Leland had grown up in this room and had probably read over half the twelve hundred volumes on the shelves. Many of the books, though, were useless, needing knowledge from other books not in this library to be understood. Like learning to run when one has never been shown how to walk.

  Leland occasionally dreamed of going to the Great Library of Noramland and the tiny university starting there. Only two hundred kilometers. Why not? He laughed bitterly to himself.

  Someone entered the library and Leland listened carefully, but the footsteps weren’t his father’s or any of his brothers’, so he slumped back in the chair and propped his feet back on the window ledge. By the Customs, all of Laal was allowed access to the library. Proving literacy was an important part of the Rites of Thirteen, when boys and girls were declared adults. And stealing a library book was punishable by shunning or exile.

  Leland was lost in his book, deep in a complex algebra word problem, when the same footsteps walked up behind him. He sat up with a guilty start and found himself staring at a young woman he’d never seen before.

  “Excuse me,” she asked. “Do you work here?”

  Leland continued to stare. She was amber-eyed with black hair and couldn’t have been much older than Leland. Her clothes were embroidered green, from bodice to slippers. She was not beautiful, her features being slightly too small for her face, but there was something about her—perhaps her still, confident posture—that Leland found very attractive. He found his tongue. “I suppose you could say that. I work everywhere else.” He stood slowly and replaced the book in its shelf. “How may I help you?”

  “I was looking for books on medicine.” Leland stared, silent. She added, “As we travel to all the stewardships, I’ve been
cataloging their libraries. When there’s a book on medicine we haven’t seen before, we have a copy scribed and send it to the university—it’s a hobby of mine.”

  “Then you’re with the Steward de Noram’s party—it must be nice to travel.” He turned and led her up the aisle. “These three shelves are all we have,” he indicated. “But I wonder, have you been considering the biology and biochemistry texts? Ultimately, they are going to teach us more about medicine than these practical primers.”

  She raised her eyebrows and Leland thought about how he looked—the sun-browned skin from working in the fields. His rough clothing. She probably thought him one of the servants.

  “At one time I hoped to do that, but no one can follow the trains of knowledge required to understand those texts.”

  Leland shook his fingers at the ceiling. “That’s because the books are spread from Cotswold to Kai Lung and nobody has ever taken the effort to consolidate them, as you are doing with these medical works.” He stepped back. “Excuse me. It’s long been a dream of mine to be able to walk into a library that was complete—not just a collection of fragments as this one is. Forgive me for getting excited.”

  She smiled at him suddenly, a burst of sunlight in the shadowy room. He wondered, if he were to turn suddenly, would he see his shadow cast on the wall. She spoke. “It’s a good dream.” Almost under her breath she added, “I share it.”

  For the first time in months Leland smiled naturally with no trace of irony or self-derision. It felt strange on his face.