by Rich Horton
But they taught me to see, and to listen, and how to make the snake do what I wanted. They told me the things the snake could do and the things she couldn’t, and how to summon the dead and the other spirits. Does this mean I can order you about now? I asked, and because they couldn’t lie they said nothing. They taught me how to herd the clouds and make lightning, how to smell for poison and witchcraft, how to heal injuries and illnesses, and how to hurt people. All useful stuff.
Then, when I was sixteen, my master died suddenly. It shows how useless he was, and how much the spirits disliked him, that his death came as much of a surprise to him as to me, and all the rest of us. He was sitting outside in the sun one morning, and a big lump of rock crumbled away from the side of the mountain and fell on his head.
No great loss, they told me, but I was sorry for him, even so. He was one of those people who shouldn’t have been born with the gift but was anyway. He thought he was a much better doctor than he really was, and was therefore continually disappointed; needless to say, he blamed everybody and everything else, and so went through life in a constant state of anger and resentment. I buried him under the door of his hut, and then it actually sank in. All this was mine now, I was the wizard of the Black Kloof, and I was on my own.
Which is why, as people are forever reminding me, I’m young to be a doctor. I’m ten times better at it than he was, and he never liked me anyway. But I miss him, even so. The snake told me once that the spirits loosened that rock and made it fall when it did. I choose not to believe her.
My snake led me to the army camp where, I have to say, I was not made welcome. Members of my profession, even young ones who don’t wear all the get-up, aren’t popular with the military. This may be because unscrupulous kings over the years have used doctors to get rid of over-mighty generals with spurious accusations of witchcraft. If so, I don’t blame them one bit.
I hadn’t got the faintest idea who I was supposed to be looking for, let alone his name or a description or anything like that, but she slipped out of my ear and bustled along in front of me, and I followed. She led me to the smithy. It was going to be one of those days.
Smiths are another section of the community who don’t like us. I can see why; we’re too much alike. We say that a smith is a wizard without the talent. They don’t say what they say about us to our faces, and nobody wants to tell us, but we can guess. This particular smith was a big fat man, about fifty years old, with a headring gleaming with sweat and burn-scars all over his arms and chest. He stood in front of the anvil, wiping his forehead and holding a half-done spearhead in the red coals. Behind him, a lad of about my age was pumping a double bellows. “What do you want?” asked the smith.
A very good question. Fortunately, the snake was back inside my head and spoke for me. “You had a sister,” I said.
He froze, then turned and scowled at the boy. “Go away,” he said. The boy let go of the bellows handles as though they were red hot and ran out. “You,” said the smith, “make yourself useful and work the bellows. I don’t want to lose the heat.”
Anything to oblige. Needless to say, I don’t know the first thing about blacksmiths’ work. Curiously and fortuitously, the snake does. I got a nice smooth rhythm going. “I asked you a question,” I said.
“Who the hell are you, anyway?”
I smiled, took one hand off the handles and drew it round my head, like a coiling snake. Everybody knows what that means.
“A bit young, aren’t you?”
“So I gather. Well?”
I could see he was considering his alternatives, of which he seemed to feel there were two. The first, which I could see he favoured, was bashing me on the head with his hammer and shoving my face in the fire. Reluctantly, he opted to go with the second.
“What about her?”
Behind him, I could see three women; one old, one middle-aged with a baby on her hip, and one young and very beautiful. “She’s dead.”
“I know. What’s it to you?”
“Your mother had a long nose and a pointed chin, and a scar just above her left eyebrow. You had a brother, but he died when he was a baby. But you loved your grandmother best, and she loved you.”
He winced. “All right,” he said, “you’re a wizard. What about my sister?”
Sometimes you just have to guess. “She had two children,” I said. “Their father wasn’t her husband.”
He grinned at me. “She had two sons and three daughters.”
And sometimes you guess wrong. “Her lover was the prince,” I said. “The one we can’t talk about.”
He looked at me, then down at the spearhead, which was starting to show white round the edges. Slowly he lifted it out and laid it on the ashes. “You can stop pumping,” he said.
I was glad to hear that. Bellows are more work than they look. “She married a man over by the White River,” I said. “He died recently, along with his daughter and all his household.”
The smith shrugged. “I heard he was a traitor,” he said.
“Maybe,” I replied. “It’s one of those words, the more people use it, the less it means. Now,” I went on, “the prince’s daughter stayed with her mother, but not the boy. What became of him, do you know?”
He wiped sweat out of his eyes. “No idea,” he said. “The boy was the older of the two, by a year or so. Because of who his father was, she sent him away as soon as he was born. Then the prince started the war and got killed, so none of us wanted to know any more about anything, if you get what I mean. Who else knows about this?”
“Nobody,” I said. “Just you, me and the snake. She won’t tell anyone if you don’t.”
“How about you?”
“Oh, I do as I’m told.” That made him grin, in spite of himself. “Why should I want to tell anybody, anyway? You don’t know anything, you just said.”
He’s lying, of course, the snake told me. Yes, I told her, I’d guessed that.
“I haven’t heard anything about the boy since he was born,” he said firmly. “I wouldn’t know him if I met him in the road.”
“Quite,” I said. “And how could the boy be a threat to the king if nobody knows him and he’s got no way of proving he’s got a claim to the throne?” I paused for a moment. “Some people might say that’s a pity,” I said.
He stiffened, like a splash of hot lead falling into water. “Don’t talk like that,” he said.
“Why not? Nobody here but us and the rats in the thatch. There’s some people who might say, no matter how bad this boy is, he couldn’t be worse. Pointless, of course, if he can’t even be found.”
There’s something unnerving about the sight of a huge man, strong as a bull, terrified. “Now who would say something like that?”
“Oh, people I’ve talked to. Quite a lot of them, actually. They’re saying, nobody wants another civil war, not like the last one, and there’s not many who’d be willing to march out and fight in one, and who’d blame them? But if, heaven forbid, the king was to fall down dead, through illness—” I paused, and smiled. “Or witchcraft, even. He’s got no sons, he’s always been very careful about that, no brothers, no living relatives of any sort, so who’s going to take his place? The country needs a king, someone’s got to do it. And if there’s a nephew—” I shrugged. “I think a lot of people would rest easier knowing there’s an heir to the throne, don’t you?”
He looked at me like a drowning man. “What did you say your name was?”
“It’s not a very interesting name,” I told him. “Even if I told you, you’d have forgotten it a moment later. Talking of names,” I added.
He looked away. “He didn’t have one,” he said. “I told you, they got him out of there practically as soon as he was born. What he’s called now I have no idea.”
“But the people you sent him to,” I said. “They had names. Most people do.”
“I don’t remember.”
I smiled. I didn’t want to. I quite liked the man. “I’m
a doctor,” I said, “I have medicines for a poor memory. And other things too, of course.”
He’s going to say it, I thought. He said it. “Are you threatening me?”
“Yes.”
They never expect you to say that. He actually shuffled back a step or two, as if that’d do him any good. The sight of so much cowardice made my skin crawl. “Leave me alone, will you?” he said, raising his voice (but it came out as a rather louder whine). “I don’t know anything.”
I hate doing this sort of thing. “Maybe not,” I said. “But it’s all right, I’ll know if you’re telling the truth. I’ll send my snake into your head, and she’ll tell me if there’s anything in there or not.”
I can’t do this, of course. Nobody can.
By now he’d retreated so far he was backed up against the anvil stand, with nowhere to go. “Please,” he said, “it’s my sister’s boy, if they find him they’ll kill him. He’s all that’s left of her. Please.”
I’m not sure I’d have had the heart to carry on if he hadn’t made a spectacle of himself by grovelling. But all I could feel was contempt. “That’s enough,” I said. “Now, the more you can hold still, the less damage she’ll do. You really do need to co-operate if you don’t want to spend the rest of your life sitting against a wall somewhere.”
“All right,” he said. I could hardly bear to look at him. I wanted to squash him, like a nasty insect. But he told me a name. It hit me like—well, like the rock that had fallen on my master. It crushed me flat. Like an idiot, I said, “Are you sure?” or “Say again?” or something like that. He repeated the name; also her father’s name, and where they lived. I think I said, “Thank you, I’m sorry,” or something of the kind, and then I stumbled out into the light, not looking back.
Well, so much for that idea.
The thing is, I don’t go looking for trouble. Some people do. Some people delight in the thunder and the stamping and the shouting and the screams of dying men. Some people can only find peace in war; without fighting and conflict, they’re like newly-planted seedlings in dry weather, drooping and parched. Some people can only live if there’s death all around them. I guess it must be the thrill. I’m not like that.
So all the stuff that continually pounds down on my head and in through my ears, like rain after thunder, is wasted on me, and I think that’s a shame, when there’s so many people out there who’d really appreciate it. I’d much rather stay home in the kloof and cure oxen with fly-bites and redwater fever. A man could get old and fat doing that, and people would be pleased to see him. But I think she’d be bored stiff. I think she likes the other stuff. It’s the only explanation I can come up with, at this moment.
I had to abandon the plan because the name the smith told me was my mother’s, sorry, the name of the woman I used to think of as my mother, and the place he named was where I grew up, before I came to live in the Black Kloof. Ridiculous.
I’d been living back in the kloof about three months when I had a dream. I was lying curled up on my mat, and all these terrifying old men came again and stood round me in a ring, looking down at me and frowning, as if they couldn’t quite bring themselves to believe I was true. At first I was scared of them, but they kept on staring and muttering, and I knew that sort of thing was rude, so after a while I stopped being scared and got annoyed. “What?” I said.
One old man, who seemed really put out about something, said, “So you’re him, then.”
“Me?” I said. “I’m nobody. I’m not important. Please go away.”
They looked at each other, and one of them said, “Are you quite sure? He looks so—” He didn’t finish his sentence, and the others just shrugged.
“What?” I repeated. “What are you talking about? Is there something wrong with me, or something?”
Then one of them laughed, but it wasn’t a funny laugh. “You know what, son,” he said, sounding as though I’d just spat in his beer, “it’d have been better for everybody if you’d never been born. Come on,” he added, to the others. “There’s nothing we can do about it, that’s for sure.” And then they all started to walk away, and I woke up.
I couldn’t kill the king and put the prince’s long-lost son on the throne because that long-lost son was apparently me. So the plan was out of the question; for many reasons, but principally because I’m a doctor, a wizard. No wizard has ever been king, it’s unthinkable. For that to happen, a king would have to have a son born with the talent, and send him away to learn the craft under some master, and no king would ever do that. No wizard born outside the royal family could ever usurp the throne, because all his fellow-wizards would band together to stop him, and then there’d be a spirit war which would stamp the land flat. All the cattle would die, all the children would be still-born, there would be so much lightning and no rain— So that’s that. The People of Heaven wouldn’t stand for it, either. If I was to be king, they’d tear me in pieces, or die in their thousands trying.
So; right back to where we started.
“You did say,” I told him. “Any time, day or night.”
He grunted like a pig. “Did I?”
“Yes.”
He sighed. It was the middle of the night. He’d been with his youngest wife, not sleeping. “I must have meant it, then. So, you found him.”
I tried not to look at the faces crowding round us, but it was hard. I recognised some of them, but most were unfamiliar, though the family resemblance was quite strong in some of them. The huge, grim-faced man with the wild eyes could only have been the Black One himself, the Lion, He-Stamps-Them-Flat, the founder of the kingdom; is there anyone living who wouldn’t give his right arm for a chance to see Him, find out what He really looked like? But I didn’t dare, I could only peek at him on the very edge of my vision. My ancestors, I realised; what an extraordinary thought. The Black One was my great-great-great-great grandfather.
“Are you sure we’re alone?” I said.
He laughed out loud. “Oh, quite sure,” he said. “I don’t want to share this with anybody.”
Me included. I wasn’t at all sure I knew what to do about that. Still, I’d run out of options, so what could I do? Think of something, and quickly. “No rats in the thatch, even?”
He looked at me for a moment; then, with a degree of speed and power remarkable in someone so fat, he stood up and drove the little red-handled spear he always carried into the thatch above his head, right up to the socket. He pulled it out, drove it in again about a foot to the left, and so on about a dozen times. Then he sat down again. “No rats,” he said. “Go on.”
The show of violence had unnerved me, and I had to pull myself together before I could speak. One thrust of that little toy spear, so very quick, not upwards this time, was all it would take, and all my troubles would be over. I’m not afraid of death, remember. Even so.
“Very well,” I said, and I told him a name. It was a lie. It was the name of the son of a very big important man, commander of five regiments, loved by all the people for his fairness, his generosity, his wisdom, his courage. Either of them, father or son, would have made a good king. A stable kingdom with a not-quite-so-good king and a standing army can do without men like that.
I felt the snake swell her coils in rage, because I’d just told a lie. The pain was unbearable. I didn’t dare breathe, for fear of crying out. The pressure kept on building, and I felt my eyeballs bulge.
“Are you sure?” he said.
I couldn’t speak, so I nodded.
He looked at me. “Are you feeling all right?” he said. “You look awful.”
“I’m fine,” I croaked. “Thank you.”
(As I said, I quite like him. Just occasionally, there are these flashes of humanity through the clouds of Heaven. Just occasionally. If he hadn’t had to be a king, he’d have been all right. He didn’t have the choice, of course. Not like some—)
“You’re sure,” he repeated. I nodded again. My head was about to crack open, like an egg h
atching. “It seems so unlikely,” he went on. “Of all the people, why him? In the war against my brother, he was on my side. Really on my side, I was sure of it. I can’t believe he’d have taken in my brother’s son. It makes no sense.”
“Rich men like to collect weapons,” I said. Luckily I’d learned the speech by heart beforehand. “They don’t necessarily plan on using them, but they like to own them—you know; fine spears, ironwood kerries, axes with rhinoceros-horn handles. And maybe a man might get to thinking, if ever I had to defend myself against the king, I’d need a pretty special weapon, something practically unique. And maybe a clever tactician, an experienced soldier or someone like that, might feel the need to start defending himself before the attack comes.”
He thought about that for a long time, and I could see him slowly getting angry—not the sort of anger he does for show, because it’s expected of him, with shouting and arm-waving, but the quiet, tight-lipped kind that comes from being hurt and frightened and betrayed. Meanwhile, the pain in my head wasn’t getting better, but it had stopped getting worse.
“Are you sure?” he said.
I nodded, and this time I couldn’t stop myself, because the snake swelled alarmingly and I had to cry out. He looked at me. “What’s the matter?” he said.
I managed to grind out the words. “My head hurts, Lord.”
“You chose a strange time to have a headache.” He frowned, then looked past me towards the doorway. “Apart from me and you,” he said.
“Nobody, Lord.”
He rubbed his lower lip with his thumb. I don’t know anybody else who does that. “There’s an argument for saying that letting you live would be weakness.”
I was distressed to see a couple of my ancestors nodding their heads behind him. “No, Lord,” I said, “with respect. Letting the boy live would be weakness. Letting me live would be enlightened self-interest. Killing me would be a waste. If your father was here now, he’d agree with me,” I added, untruthfully.
