The Coming of Wisdom

by David Duncan

  "The gods are cruel, my lord brother."

  "Nnanji..."

  "I could not have done it."

  That was absurd. I could not have displayed such cowardice, and therefore you have more courage than I have? Some of Honakura's contorted logic, no doubt.

  "Nnanji, I am sorry."

  Nnanji shook his head sadly. "The gods are cruel. 'When the mighty has been spurned'? The old man explained that you had to suffer that, brother... but I could not have done it. Not even for the Goddess Herself." He looked as if he wanted to comfort Wallie with a hug.

  "Oh.. .Oh, hell!" That cute little solecism might excuse Wallie's behavior to Nnanji, but it was a lie. He could not hide behind such deception, no matter how hateful the truth. "I did not think of the riddle. It never entered my mind. I crawled because I did not want to die."

  Nnanji closed his eyes and shivered.

  "It was the way of honor in my other world." There was no way Wallie could ever reconcile a shame culture and a guilt culture. The ways of thinking were too unlike. But he had to try―try to show Nnanji that what he had done was not such an atrocity to him. "I had broken a law. I paid the penalty. It hurt no one but me, you see. It was better than dying, I thought. I told you I was doing my best in this world... but I warned you. I said that I was not really a swordsman."

  "Uh!" Nnanji shook his head as if to clear it and turned away to hide his face. "But the gods must have known that you would do that thing."

  "I suppose so. Perhaps I should have jumped. Perhaps She would have let me... return safely." There was no easy word for swimming.

  Moments crawled by. Crowd noises drifted in from the dock.

  "I did warn you, Nnanji. That first day, when we sat on the wall in the temple gardens..."

  " 'I am not one of those heroes you find in epics.' I remember."

  "I can't release you from the fourth oath. It is irrevocable. But the second has lapsed, if that is what you want. We remain oath brothers, but we need never meet again. At the next port you can leave."

  After another moment, Nnanji turned around and straightened his bony shoulders. "No. I also have a part to play. The old man still thinks so. I will stay." He held out Wallie's hairclip.

  Surprised and gratified, Wallie took it and scooped his hair back to fasten. "It may not be for very long. The little god warned me―punishment for failure is death, or worse. Honakura may be mistaken about the riddle. I may have screwed everything up. So it may not be for very long."

  Nnanji swallowed hard. "Worse? You have been punished already, then. Maybe not... And it was my fault, too, brother!"

  "Never! What do you mean?"

  "You told me to warn you when you were making a mistake. Taking off your sword―"

  "You did warn me. I ignored you."

  Nnanji drew the seventh sword.

  Wallie's heart skipped a beat and then began working a little harder than usual. He was unarmed. Nnanji with a naked sword in his hand was a matter to consider very carefully.

  "I could have stopped you, brother," he said softly.

  Wallie said nothing. In the dimness of the deckhouse, light flashed from the deadly blade as Nnanji twisted it to and fro, looking down at it pensively. "I should have stopped you. But you were Her champion."

  Were? One thing certainly had died this day―Nnanji had been brutally cured of his hero worship.

  Then he looked up at Wallie and forced a thin smile―as insubstantial as dust, a smile that registered much more wry than joyous.

  "Are," he said. "Her champion, I mean." He held out the scabbard and harness. He retained the sword.

  Very uneasy now, Wallie took the harness and began buckling it on, wondering what was happening under that red hair.

  "I hope I still am. But I don't feel like a champion today."

  Again Nnanji looked down at the sword in his hand, watching the play of light on the sapphire, the silver, and the razor steel. . "Do you remember the last thing Briu said, my lord brother?"

  "No."

  "The last-but-one thing. He said, 'I suppose we must keep trying to do better.' "

  Perhaps Nnanji was regretting his change of mentors.

  No; he stared calculatingly at Wallie for a moment, and then went down on one knee. He held out the seventh sword in both hands, proffering it. He said solemnly: "Live by this. Wield it in Her service. Die holding it."

  It was the ceremony of dedication. The sutras required it for a recruit's first sword, but the swordsmen applied it to any new blade. Nnanji was using it for a rededication―a renewal, Shonsu reborn. But it also meant friendship, for when a swordsman acquired a new sword he would ask his best friend to give it to him. So it meant forgiveness and reconciliation, affirmation and a fresh start. It meant: "Be a swordsman now." It was full of squishy swordsman romanticism that was typical of Nnanji and now felt absurdly reassuring and right.

  Angry at the childish lump in his throat, Wallie spoke the reply: "It shall be my honor and my pride."

  He took the sword and smiled at Nnanji as he rose. "Thank you, brother. I shall try to do better."

  Nnanji did not return the smile. He said softly, "So shall I."

  They both swung around as the door opened.

  "Master!" Jja said urgently. "The ship is about to leave. Novice Katanji is not on board."

  ††† † †††

  zzz

  Nnanji was almost at the door when Wallie's hand closed like a lion's jaw on his shoulder. "Bad tactics, brother!"

  "Oh, right!" Nnanji said.

  So he remained to fret unseen, and it was Wallie who marched out to investigate. Ironic cheers from the dock greeted him. Lumber and pots had been retrieved and untidily piled on the deck. The wind had returned. Hands stood at lines, Brota was at the tiller, and two men were already stooping to take hold of the gangplank. They straightened up angrily as Wallie's boot came down on it.

  One of them was Tomiyano, and his eyes spat fire at Wallie. The burn on his left cheek was black and cracked like charred alligator hide. Even under a thick wad of grease, it had to be hurting like hell. His voice was slurred as he tried not to move that side of his mouth. "What the demons are you doing now, swordsman?"

  "Our First is still ashore."

  "The bag-heads told us to leave," the captain mumbled. "You going to go argue with them?"

  "I suppose I must." Wallie stepped out on the plank, and the crowd hushed at once.

  There were eight or nine sorcerers down on the dock now. They had closed off the roadway from the water across to the warehouses, and spectators massed behind the cordon on both sides. There were people leaning from the warehouse windows and people precarious on wagons and people in the rigging of the nearby ships, apparently assembled to view this unobtrusive scouting mission by the Shonsu expedition, sneaking unnoticed around Aus.

  The Fourth with the squeaky voice was still there, but a Fifth now stood beside him, an impersonal red monk with a blotch of shadow instead of a face―so the Sapphire affair was bringing out the big fish. Katanji might be miles away, but hopefully he was somewhere close, trapped in one crowd or the other with empty roadway between him and the gangplank. His facemark had been a suppurating mess, but it would not stand a close scrutiny.

  Wallie paraded down the plank with all eyes on him, his skin tingling in expectation of some unpredictable supernatural attack. He stopped a foot from the end, folded his arms, and stared across at the Fourth and Fifth.

  "I would speak with you, Adept Sorcerer," he called. The two cowled heads, one red and one orange, turned toward each other, conferring for a few moments. Then the Fourth came slowly forward and stopped a few feet away, out of sword range from the plank. The cold eyes stared out of the cowl.

  "What more do you want, swordsman?" asked the squeaky voice.

  Wallie tried to read the thin features. There was something new there―less triumph? Resentment? A reprimand, perhaps?

  "I wished to thank you for sparing my life, adept.
Indeed, I would shake your hand if you would allow it." Of course, if you can read my mind, you'll see what I am doing is distracting you and your friends.

  "Snake hands with a sorcerer? Have you asked any swordsmen to shake your hand yet, Shonsu?"

  Hurry, Katanji!

  Shonsu!

  "You did not know me by that name earlier, sorcerer."

  A flush swept over the shadowed face. "That is not true!"

  Wallie had not planned to do more than create a diversion. To rouse the sorcerers' ire further might be dangerous folly― but instructive. He smiled. "You are lying, adept!"

  The sorcerer bared his teeth. "No! It would have been fun to have carried out the original sentence, but this way is better, We shall have no further trouble from you now. You might have displayed heroism, which could have been dangerous. Your friends will be impressed by this."

  Original sentence? Tell me more!

  "No, adept. You were being merciful, and I appreciate that. Again I offer you my hand."

  "Again I spurn it. My masters' patience is not unlimited. Only my oath has protected you this far. Get back on that ship, Shonsu! You will have more crawling to do when you return to your nest."

  Out of the corner of his eye, Wallie saw someone break out of the crowd and come running along the edge of the dock. He dared not turn. The sorcerers' cowls must restrict their peripheral vision hopelessly.

  Where is my nest? You know more about Shonsu than I do. "Well, I hope that your leniency has not caused you trouble." It had―the sorcerer colored again.

  Someone jumped up on the plank behind Wallie and ran up to the deck. Wallie turned, as if surprised, and caught a glimpse of Katanji's skinny form, breechclout tail flapping.

  "Who was that?" the sorcerer squeaked.

  Wallie shrugged. "Some sailor brat. Well, I bid you farewell, adept. The Goddess be with you. The next sorcerer I meet, I shall spare for your sake."

  "It is the next swordsman you need worry about, Shonsu!" The sorcerer turned and swept away.

  Wallie started back up the plank, beginning to shiver with the release of tension. But the sorcerer had been correct. Now that he was known by name, Shonsu's reputation had gone to much less than zero. How could he ever earn an army now?

  * * *

  "Invisibility," Wallie said. "It has to be."

  He stood beside the starboard poop steps with an arm around Jja. Honakura sat halfway up, at eye level for once, a tatty black monkey with his elbows resting on his knees. Nnanji leaned against the rail with one boot on the bottom step, looking bleak as tundra. His eyes were dull, as if somehow turned inward. At his side Novice Katanji, restored now to proper swordsman dress, was being small and humble and inconspicuous, waiting for the skies to fall when his brother got him alone―or sooner, if Lord Shonsu chose to pull them down personally. The other two were in the deckhouse, Cowie caring for Vixini or possibly vice versa.

  Aus was sliding away into the distance, Sapphire starting to roll as the wind blustered in mid-River. The sun rode high yet, and the evening was far from over. Being champion for the Goddess was exacting work―in the first three days of his mission, Wallie had managed to antagonize two cities' worth of sorcerers, the entire swordsmen's craft, and a shipful of sailors. And perhaps the gods themselves.

  The sailors were the most important at the moment.

  And in return he had learned... what?

  He had described what he had seen―a burning rag, a bird appearing, a dagger disappearing, an inexplicably scorched sailor. Add in the stories from Ov, stories of magic fifes and rampaging fire demons. Add in the tales Nnanji had recounted from the temple barracks. Yet worse than what he had seen was what he had heard.

  "I thought perhaps they could tell people's thoughts," he said―Shonsu had known no word for telepathy. "Listen to our minds? But we can rule that out, because I fooled them when I was covering for Katanji; they didn't know what I was thinking then. So it has to be invisibility. When Jja spoke to me, there was a sorcerer standing beside us."

  Honakura sighed. "And how many on board now?"

  "Who can say? Keep talking and we may hear them start to laugh."

  Nnanji lifted his head and began looking around, as if counting invisible sorcerers. Or perhaps he was watching the sailors. They had almost finished tidying up the deck, and the glances they directed at the passengers from time to time bore a nasty flavor of menace. Tomiyano had run up the other steps to the poop, going to talk to his mother at the tiller. He had replaced his stolen dagger.

  "My mind chokes when I ask it to swallow invisibility," the old man complained. He had not previously heard Nnanji tell Tarru's story of the sorcerer on the donkey, the first mention of the subject, so Nnanji had repeated it for him. Honakura bared his gums in a hideous scowl.

  Wallie agreed. "Mine, also. But I can see no other explanation. Perhaps... if my folly in going ashore had any value at all, it was in giving me a chance to talk with sorcerers. And I learned that much. So my stupidity was not a total loss."

  "Why not invisible swordsmen?" Nnanji remarked glumly. "Make me invisible, my lord brother, and I'll clean up Ov and Aus for you."

  He would, too―and enjoy doing it.

  Tomiyano came down the steps and hurried to the far end of the deck. Sailors, men and women, clustered around him like a huddle of children plotting mischief.

  "Honorable Tarru's story could have another explanation," Honakura mused. "The sorcerers may be able to alter face-marks. Then the man on the donkey just became a tanner or a serf, or something."

  "I had seen that," 'Wallie said patiently. The old man could not adjust to the idea of a swordsman using brains.

  "And that would explain the fake port officer, too, if you were correct in believing that he was a sorcerer."

  "That also! But facemarks cannot explain how they over-heard Jja and me. There must have been a sorcerer on deck."

  Honakura sighed. "Yes. And if I could change my shape, I suppose I should choose to look much like that port officer―young and beautiful. Would you love me then, Jja?"

  "He was very handsome," Jja said tactfully. She smiled and reached up to kiss Wallie's cheek. "But I love only swordsmen."

  "One swordsman," Wallie said.

  "One big, strong swordsman."

  He kissed her for that. It was a long time since they had shared the feather bed in the royal suite of the temple barracks, a long time when a man had a body as lusty as Shonsu's. Already the temple was beginning to feel like the good old days.

  There was trouble brewing among the crew. The surreptitious glances were now revealing amusement. Something had been decided, and the word was being passed. Wallie's disgrace had changed their fear into contempt. The captain had been disfigured for life, the ship itself put in danger. Whatever the cause of the sailors' original hostility, they had valid reasons now to resent these swordsman intruders―and less cause to fear the Goddess. Champions do not crawl in the mire.

  "Next topic," Wallie said. "How did they know I was on board? The port officer did. I went into the deckhouse before I was visible from the shore―I'm sure of that. My eyes are as good as any, and I couldn't make out the people on the quay."

  Honakura's wrinkles writhed as he screwed up his monkey face in thought. "We thought they could send messages, my lord. The sorcerers at the quarry saw you board a blue ship. I didn't see many blue ships in Aus." In an illiterate World, of course, ships did not bear their names emblazoned on their stems.

  "Possible," Wallie said. "Although I am convinced that the sorcerers did not know me as Shonsu. Not at first. Thondi would have told them my name, but that message did not get transmitted all the way to Aus. Someone in the crowd recognized me." He was distinctive. Big swordsmen were rare.

  "Then they can see at a distance," the priest said. "They saw that the bridge was down, but perhaps not that swordsmen had crossed it. Then sorcerers from both sides met at the ruined bridge... That would fit! That was why they were so long in fol
lowing us to the quarry!"

  "Possibly," Wallie conceded. "And they saw me on board as Sapphire came into port? Possible, possible!"

  The sailors were spreading unobtrusively around the aft end of the deck. The children had been taken below. Nnanji straightened and reached up as if to feel that his sword moved freely. Just in time he changed the gesture into one of gripping the nearest mainstay and leaning against it. He could recognize danger from civilians now―he was growing more tense by the minute.

  "You are amassing an impressive list of your opponents' powers, my lord," Honakura remarked. There was enough cynicism in his tone that Nnanji flashed him an irritated glance.

  "So what did you learn, old man?" Wallie asked.

  "Very little, I admit. I could see nobody watching the ship. I saw you come down the plank and then I saw two sorcerers go after you, but I did not see where they came from. They had not passed me."

  Wallie grunted. Had those two been invisible until then? Invisible men on that tumultuous dock road would have been trampled to death in minutes. So had they been invisible on board Sapphire and then followed him ashore?

  "The locals were reluctant to discuss sorcerers with a stranger," Honakura said crossly. "Naturally. But I did learn that they have been there a long time―ten years or more."

  "Ten years?" Wallie had not expected that. "How many more cities have they seized, then?"

  "I don't know."

  A small voice said, "My lord?"

  "Yes, novice?"

  "With respect, my lord, it was eleven years ago, Swordsmen's Day, 27,344."

  "Indeed?" Wallie said. "Who told you that?"

  The boy colored slightly. "A wench, my lord. She was selling perry in mugs. She had a swordsman fathermark."

  Wallie felt a smile escape him. He glanced at Nnanji, who frowned warily.