If I took from them now, I would have earned back my coin. But I had to do better than that to make myself proud.
“She had flung herself from a tower, so shamed was she. And her brother must defend her by killing the Duke who spoke so loud against an innocent,” I said. It was becoming a lurid tale, with tricks I had sworn off using.
But the boy’s arms tapped on the floor. I could feel his interest.
I told of the father who had died a year before, from a long wasting illness that had cost them all their worldly goods. And so the brother and the sister had gone to see if friends would take them in. But they were bitterly betrayed and thrown from every door.
The woman stared at me then and put an arm around the boy. She drew his hand closer to her, and off the floor. But it did no good. He made the same sound with the other.
“When she was dead and gone, the brother was left alone. He had but one purpose in life, and that was his vengeance. He thought day and night of only his sister’s death and the Duke’s.” I told of the many men the Duke sent to kill him, and how the brother, though he had no money for food, continued to fight valiantly. Though his sword broke, and he was left with a stout staff instead, he continued to kill those set against him. And at last, he faced the Duke himself.
The boy murmured something to the woman, but she hushed him.
I went on with the story and told of the Duke’s unpleasant death, entrails spilling out with steam over the cold snow, and white against red, stark as berries, and as bitter-sweet.
The brother knelt down on his knee, ready to die. But he lived. For a time. He was found by a passing washer woman who brought him home and fed him of her fine soup.
I stared at the woman then, surprised at the words in my mouth.
She, too, looked stunned. She held out a hand as if to stop me, but I pulled the magic from the air, into myself. It was so strong then that it was irresistible. I had to have it. To deny myself of that would have been as difficult as sitting before a whole roast pig and taking in nothing but water.
I went on, telling of the love that grew between brother and washer woman.
The woman’s eyes grew wet with tears.
“The man died before he ever saw his firstborn child. He did not even give him a name, and the washer woman, though she knew the man was of noble blood, had no way of proving her son was his. She knew only of a kind couple who had helped raise a brother and sister after their mother had died in childbirth. The couple had been given a farmhouse to retire in. She waited until her son was old enough to be useful, then gathered what little they had and went on her quest.
The woman was weeping openly now.
The boy stared at me as though I were some kind of street magician, pulling a never-ending scarf from my sleeve.
I could see his pain, and hers. And still, I went on. It was as if the story had to be finished.
No, that is an excuse.
I had had a taste of the magic of my own storytelling and I could not let go of it. I wanted more and more. I could not imagine there being enough magic or stories to sate me.
I told of the boy’s coarse manners, and his mother’s southern tongue. I told of their arrival at the farmhouse, and its emptiness. Their confusion, and uncertainty. Their hope that someone would come to help them. And then a voice called from the threshold, “Halloo.”
My mouth opened to say more, but no words came out.
The story was over.
I felt as though I had been chased through the streets and attacked by dogs. My chest hurt. My throat felt raw and I could taste blood running down it. My tongue tingled with tiny cuts I must have made by clenching my jaw while it was in the way.
This was storytelling.
This was how I got my magic.
This was what the storyteller did, as well.
With a larger group of people, he would have more stories to choose from. But I had not known that he was doing so. I had not known the stories were real. I had not seen the faces of those who had been exposed, their stories laid out for others’ amusement and titillation.
Can I say I would not have done it, if I had known?
I cannot. I am an honest storyteller, if I am not a scrupulous one.
I know the truth now, but did I return to my home and take up a different occupation? I did not.
The magic tastes too good.
Better than soup.
Better than roast pig.
Better than friendship.
It is no wonder that a storyteller must roam. It is not only new stories that must be found. It is new hope.
For that is what we feed on, both of us. I had taken it from the boy and the woman. They would stay in this farmhouse the rest of their days and I would never return to them again. They had no more use for me.
I had told their story, taken the spirit of the air from them, and left them with a coin.
They did not call me thief, but when I left the next morning, the ashes were gray in the hearth and winter had seeped under the floorboards so that all of us had arms around our middles and nothing to keep us against the cold.
Except for my magic.
And the ruined words that were no longer in the air for them to hold to.
THE UNDERTAKER’S MAGIC
By the time I see them, the bodies are gray and cooling, most of them from the effects of magic. A great, final spell that was too much for them. Or a duel between magician’s. They are forbidden, but the laws are rarely enforced.
My father says it is because the king’s advisor has a son-in-law who is an undertaker, and the duels are good for us. It is the only way that we can earn money, to bury the wealthy and magical dead.
The poor and those who have no magic do not need burial. Their families say goodbye to them with a word, then shove their bodies into the water, because they have no need to fear they will rise again if not buried properly, with the incantations of darkness.
We undertakers could never be greeted at court, or even recognized. We do not live, officially. We cannot. We do not pay taxes to the king, nor are we his subjects. And though we have magic, it is only for the dampening, the end of life.
Some say that the undertakers were made by elevating those who had no magic, who were grateful to have even a taste of it, though it was such a low taste.
There are others who are certain that we were made from those who once possessed the whole range of magic, but were terribly cursed for some infraction that a distant ancestor made against the laws.
I am not sure that I think it matters much. Are we cousins to the king? Hardly. And the poor spit upon us when we pass them by, which is just as cutting as the turned up faces, the blank stares and stepping to the aside that we get from those with magic.
We have a place, perhaps.
Or we have no place, depending on how you look at it.
The woman who lay on my marble slab was not old. I guessed she was no more than thirty. She had had fine eyes. Or I thought so, at least. They were a grayish blue, unusual, and they were large against the finer features of her face: nose, mouth, chin, ears.
She had come to me dressed in a gown of silver, which stank of magic and death to me. But if that is what her family preferred her to be buried in, they would get what they asked for. Undertakers did not advise those above us with suggestions about death or grieving, no matter that we had such experience in it that they did not.
Others sent me the body naked, and packaged the burial dress separately, though there was rarely blood to worry about. It was up to me to find shoes, if I wished them. For some reason, no one ever thought of shoes. Perhaps because when they were wrapped in the burial cloths, it was only the face and a bit around the chest that they saw.
I could have made considerable money on the side by selling the fine fabrics of the dead, and leaving only enough to touch their necks. But I did not do so. Despite what they say of us, the poor and the rich, undertakers are not ghouls. We have a code of honor all our
own and those who do not adhere to it are discovered and stripped of their powers.
I carefully uncovered the woman’s body. I could feel the magic coming off of it in waves. She had died in extremis of some kind, and there were at least two kinds of magic on her. A vengeance spell had taken her and she had tried too late to fight back? So, her magic and another’s combined?
The silver cloth shimmered in my hands, more beautiful than ever I would see on any of my own kind. If I were lucky enough to find a bride, a woman either of the poor who was desperate enough to be sold by her father, or one of my own kind, she would wear the color of dun on our wedding day, to signify the death that was her place in the world, and mine. It would cover her from neck to toe, and there would be a shawl over her head to keep the shine of her hair from tempting others to our way. The fabric must be made without magic, but of organic materials that would not cling to her figure and make others jealous of me.
For no one is to be jealous of the undertakers.
The dead woman had a fine body beneath the silver. Firm breasts, a stomach that was convex, not concave. She had not starved herself, and there were muscles beneath the surface of the skin. Much good they had done her when magic had come to take her.
I had to turn her over to make sure I did not rip the gown, and that was when I saw the faint black spots dappling her back.
I stepped back from her instantly.
Black spots like that came from only one thing. Taking on power that was not truly one’s own. In other words, being an undertaker and using the magic of the nobles.
I rolled her back over, forcing myself to take measured breaths. I counted in and out. Three, and three. Three and three again.
I slipped the rest of the gown from her legs.
She fell back limply because I had not held her closely to my chest.
I felt a salty sensation in my throat, the warning that I would vomit.
I ran from it, from her, into the back room that was my own bed chamber. There was a bucket there that I used in the night.
I arrived only just in time.
The stench of acid and bile filled the room, and I sat on the floor, the bucket at my side, under my elbow. I leaned on it for strength, and heard the harsh sounds in my throat, gargling, strangling sounds.
I did not gag again.
I was proud of myself for that small pride. When I was first my father’s apprentice, I had vomited enough to pull my intestines inside out. I had thought myself cured of it now. Surely there is a limit on how many times one may be so disgusted. I had long since passed it.
The man who had died from using magic to make himself stronger, more muscular, until his heart burst out of his chest.
A small child who had died in her mother’s arms, both of them covered with boils of vengeance from the king himself.
A father who had stabbed himself in the stomach as the old tales say that magic demanded of all, if there was a breach of honor by his kin. Such tales of honor are much told in theater these days, but rarely lived out as this man had. I could see no beauty in his death, and his bowels were a mess that his own dogs had played in.
I rose to my feet, shaky. I forced myself to walk back to the woman’s body. The silver gown was in a heap on the floor. I had not fouled it, which was good. The cost of replacing it was more than I could afford, even with the magic I would take from her.
I folded it neatly, and tried to think of other things. It was what I had learned from my father, not to think of the smell or the magic or of death, but of what my hands would do next, what they would write, how they would feel when they touched cold flesh. Or, if it was worse, I could think of something far away, the sound of water trickling from a mountain stream, or the way a woman at a street market danced with veils.
“Now I am done,” I told myself.
I should have put my hands on her feet and drawn what magic remained from her, to prevent her from rising.
Instead, I looked at her fingernails.
They were bitten to the quick, battered, and underneath her fingertips, calluses. Her hands showed her to be of my class, or lower. And yet, her father was wealthy enough to buy an undertaker’s magic for her.
She had been given magic, I realized. Long before she died. Magic that did not belong to her, or to me.
And I was to erase all evidence of what she had been, to take away the last of the magic that might make her rise again.
But I could not do it.
I kissed her as I usually did, the final ritual to send her magic out into the void.
But instead the magic came back into her. I still do not know if I did it under my own control or if she had somehow left enough magic on herself to force me to do this for her, even after she was gone.
Sometimes I think that if it was a spell, it was a simple one, of simply a man to a woman. It had been too long since I had been so close to a real woman.
I do not count those girls who had been thrust at me at parties. Oversized jaws, teeth hanging out, with eyes too bright with wine. They touched me, when it was my place to touch them. My mother encouraged them, eager for grandchildren.
I had tried to explain to her that I had no wish for children who would be trapped in the same life that I was. She asked me if I was saying that she and my father had been wrong to have me, and slapped me when I answered true.
The woman sat up, blinked at me, then down at herself.
Her hands went to cover her breasts. She swore, then looked at the marble slab, and stopped abruptly, her mouth wide open.
“I died,” she whispered.
I nodded to her, and felt a sting as she slapped my hand. It had been reaching for her breast.
“Where are my clothes?” she asked.
I bent over to get the silver gown, then hit my head as I stood back up, and cursed as well as she had.
She smiled. She let out a breath that was almost a laugh, but nowhere near a giggle.
I gave her the gown.
She slipped in on over her head, which covered her breasts well enough, but it pooled around her waist, so that I could still see the length of her supple legs and the swell of her hips.
“I died,” she said again. “And you are the undertaker.”
I nodded, wondering again if she knew or guessed this. “Tell me how,” I said.
She stared at me and chewed her lower lip, hesitating a long while.
“Not that. How you died,” I said.
“Oh. That. My father found me,” she said simply. “He had promised he would, and I never doubted him. Yet I had fourteen years with the magic he had denied me, by my birth.” There was more irony than fury in her eyes.
“I am sorry,” I said.
“I am not,” she said. “I lived more than I thought I would. I took what I could from him. It was why I survived even my death.”
I knew who her father was. “What will you do now?” I asked her. “Your father will expect to pay his respects to your body.”
“Ha,” she said shortly. “He will not come here. He will not bother.”
“He will know if there is no body. Someone will tell him.”
“That is true,” she said. “But there are ways to fool those who do not watch closely. One body can be made to look like another, with a little magic.”
“I could die for that,” I said.
“And are you so frightened of death? You who have seen it so often, who have been paid in its coin?” There was a fire in her that added to her beauty and allure. I could not resist anything she asked.
I will not blame her for that. There are times when magic is not needed for a man to act a fool for a woman.
“You have more magic than you think. You have only to use it, to experiment with it, to discover what you can do. The king makes his laws to prevent you from doing exactly that.”
“I will do it,” I said.
She nodded, and already it seemed as if she had left me and gone far away.
“Will you
run away from him again?” I asked. I had to touch her shoulder to make her notice me again, and then she started.
“Oh, no,” she said. “I am not afraid of him any longer.”
I let her go, and prepared a body in her place. It was an animal, but I used magic to disguise it. No one guessed the truth, none of the men her father sent to see her dead.
The king died a week later, and miraculously, his daughter revealed that she was yet alive, after all these years. She succeeded him on the throne and the kingdom rejoiced.
I have not seen the revolution in magic that she hinted at, but perhaps it will come. Either that, or the queen’s men will come for me, to punish me for helping her live.
THE FORGOTTEN MOUNTAINS
Milles put an arm around his horse Stone, who was a dusty tan color and was as old as Milles’ mother and with the same stern sentiment. Milles had grown up on Stone’s back. He had wept on Stone’s mane when his father had been killed in the war. He had ridden away from the tribe on Stone the day that he had heard that he would have to make the trial. He had also ridden back, and faced the bowed heads and sullen faces of those who had betrayed him.
Jired had the horse that Milles envied. Snake was as fast as his namesake, and a darker gray with splotches that looked like the diamond coloring on the back of a snake. He also liked to stick out his tongue and hiss at people he did not like, and he was hardly older than Jired was.
Jired’s mother had gifted him to her son from her father’s own herd, which was the most valuable in the tribe. Jired’s father had been the tribe’s leader until the war, when he had been injured and had come home without an eye and without something else that he had once had. He would not be the leader anymore, and would not even speak aloud.
At least Jired still had his father, thought Milles. At least he had a horse that was the envy of everyone in the tribe. At least he would be able to travel through the forgotten mountains swiftly and to the place of the trial. If there was a question of which horse would survive in difficult conditions, Milles had no doubt it would be Snake.
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