The sun was climbing the sky. It would be a good day, a day made better by yesterday's rain. The more pious among the pilgrim throng would have no complaints, since rain could not affect the course of services inside the great temple. But the majority of pilgrims came as much for the fair as for the holy observances, and if yesterday's weather had forced them into piety, they would make up for it today. Already the grounds were bustling, the gawkers and strollers and jingle-purses coming to look and admire and buy.
Scarron arranged his change in a specially carved sectioned bowl, one of his best labors. In form it aped the nautilus's honeycombed shell, even to having that creature's weirdly filamented face for stem and foot, each chamber holding a different kind of coin.
"How fine."
Scarron's head jerked up. Siluia's golden eyes were on him, alight with amusement, her delicate lips parted to show a double row of small, peculiarly sharp teeth. She traced the curve of the nautilus's shell with one snowy finger. "You have him to the life. If you'd put him in water, he'd fill his chamber and shoot away over the waves. Although ... No, I see you've weighed him down with coins. How wise you are, Scarron. Nothing holds tighter than a golden snare."
Her words washed over the boy like songs in a foreign tongue. All that remained with him was the music. He raised the bowl to her as he'd seen the temple acolytes do with the thank-offerings the departing merchants made to the Sky Lords.
"If you like it . . . it's yours."
Siluia laughed. The sun painted streaks of gold on her frothy hair. "I come to give you an apology, and you try to give me a present. Why weren't you the one—?" She made a little rasping sound in her throat, and a frown flickered over her face. Whatever had troubled her, she dismissed it quickly and was soon smiling again.
"Well ... I want to ask your pardon for my brusqueness earlier, but— Dear me, I see that I must soon open my stall if I want to accomplish anything today. A proper apology can't be a quick one, though. Ah, I know!" Her right hand darted down to pluck one of the seven silver rings she wore. She pressed it into Scarron's hand. "My pledge. If I don't redeem it with an apology by sundown, you may redeem it for a kiss before sunrise. A bargain?" She did not wait for his answer but flew past the fat man's stall and disappeared into her own.
"What cracked your skull? Wake up!" Malfora's strident baby voice scraped on Scarron's nerves after Siluia's purling music. "Come on, help me polish the rest of these. We're behind! Fatty's got a crowd all to himself already."
It was so. Scarron slipped Siluia's ring over his smallest finger as the fat man's sales cry boomed in his ears: "Step near, see clear, my lords and my fine ladies! A minor magic, and yet a mighty one! Who would not yearn for strawberries while snow covers the ground? Who has not hungered for delicacies out of season? But place your chosen dainty in one of my bowls, position the lid—so!—and press down ..."
One of the ladies nearest the fat man's counter gasped at the violent hiss that issued from the covered bowl. The merchant beamed paternally.
"How perceptive, my dear. That hiss you hear is the captive spriteling bound to serve the mistress of the bowl. One bowl, one spriteling, not one without the other, and all the enchantment these delightful creatures can do is to suspend time within the tiny compass of their prisons. Time, and whatever else you put into the bowl! Come now, who'll be first to buy? ..."
"Fine bowls! Pretty bowls! All kinds! All woods!"
Malfora had an astonishingly robust set of lungs for such a stringy child. Usually her cries were augmented by Scarron's, but today all he was good for was sitting next to the change bowl and looking at one of his hands.
The fair was well and truly under way. One voice the less, one merchant not shouting his wares at the top of his lungs, would make little difference. Every stall-keeper was wrapped up in his own affairs, paying no mind to his neighbors' doings. No one noticed when the green baize curtain came down.
Lady Demaris was the first to discover the new stall. She and her old nurse were part of the throng at the fat man's booth when her nose began to twitch. Of course, being a poet, her senses were far more refined and responsive than those of the commonalty. It was only a thin wisp of fragrance, but it drew her as surely as the goldcup blossom drew bees.
A thin white candle burned on a silver disk, its perfume too heavy to issue from such a slender taper. Other candles lined flimsy shelves tacked up between the stalls' cane struts, none of them lit. One was enough for the lure.
"Mind the coins, Malfora." Scarron vaulted down from the wagon, no more able than the lady Demaris to resist the candle's call. Others came, too, their eyes holding a glow too deep to come from a single flame. The shabby stall held darkness in broad day to back the burning candle, a wedge of trapped nighttime that defied explanation. Thin cloth spread over cane frames could not keep out the sun so thoroughly.
Siluia's face hovered above the flame, a lozenge of ivory and gold. Her white hair spilled down over her breast and wove itself into smoke.
"Come to me, come, my lords, my ladies. My scents are sweet, my candles buds of light that flower at a touch. I capture sun and honey, flowers and the golden sheen of summer on a bee's wing. Come and buy, come and buy . . ."
The fat man stopped his shouted spiel of spritelings trapped in magic dishes. The horn-handed carver of children's toys who held the stall across the way was also silent. Malfora still cried her wares, but Siluia's softer call hushed the edge from the child's voice and made it almost musical. The crowds ebbed from every stall but hers, and many of the vendors did the same.
"What is that scent?" The lady Demaris croaked her question.
"A flower essence; a single one, my lady. Do you like it? I have other shapes and sizes and fragrances for sale if you'd prefer." The spell's surface cracked. Siluia sounded like any other stall-woman, mouthing her stock for the clients. The darkness behind her leaked away through that sudden flaw in her glamour, letting light steal in through cloth walls grown gradually translucent again.
The lady threw off the scraps of spell with a shiver, recovering herself nicely. "Yes, my good woman, I would like something a trifle—gayer than white, with perhaps a musky perfume. And this candle is too thin by half to fit the sockets in my dining hall. Would you have something about so big around?" Her thumb and forefinger described the desired ring size.
The white-haired woman nodded and tripped toward the back of her stall, where a second baize curtain cut off two-thirds of the rear area from view. She vanished behind it for a moment and returned with a candle colored like the rain-bright sky.
"Take this with you today, my lady, and kindle it in your room, with your own hands. See how you like to live with its light. If it pleases you, I can promise you more. If not . . . well, bring it back to me tomorrow."
It was a queer way of offering the customer a test of the wares, but Ithkar brimmed with queer ways. The lady Demaris was more than pleased when the strange stall-woman required no pledge from her to guarantee the return of the candle. She and her nurse departed to see more of the great fair.
Other clients came, not all so highborn or particular as the lady Demaris. Siluia did brisk trade, and as she'd promised, she sent many of her buyers over to Scarron's stall.
"A candle of that type burns best if cradled in a bowl about this height, good sir. I'm sorry, I don't sell what you'd need, but I believe I saw a very handsome example at a booth not far from— Why, there it is, two down. Thank you, sir. You won't regret it."
As that memorable day went on, the chambers of the carved nautilus began to overflow. Scarron cursed as he tried to keep the coins in their proper places; no use. They spilled over, and some even fell out of the bowl altogether, sending Malfora to grub for them in the dirt under the wagon.
"Better trade up." Scarron clenched his teeth, laboriously counting out most of the smaller coins. He poured them into his pouch and passed it to his sister. "Here. Go to the money-changers and have that turned to five gels and three ryvers.
"
"There's the change fee—"
"I put in enough to cover that. Evenly, so don't get any ideas. Scoot!"
Malfora took off in a flash of dirty heels. Scarron sat back on his haunches and sighed, looking over his stock. In one day he'd sold as many bowls as would go in a ten-day under ordinary circumstances. He had additional stock tucked away in a chest slung under the wagon-bed, but of the bowls he'd put on display that morning, only seven were left.
Seven bowls unlike any others: they were carved of a rich black wood supposed to come from a single island in the Western Sea; a wood so hard that the skilled carver could turn the burnished grain to frozen lace with his blade. Last year Scarron had used nearly half of the fair profits to buy himself a block of that wondrous wood. Perhaps it was foolish—Malfora surely said it was—but he felt himself ready to try his skill on it. The seven bowls were the result, seven cobweb flowers, seven blackfrost stars. Their price was high—it had to be—and nothing short of starvation would convince Scarron to lower it. No haggling for dreams.
The day was waning, the crowd wandering off to where the flaming cressets of the food-sellers beckoned. Scarron's mouth watered at the thought of the fair's delicacies. The fat man was closing up his booth for the dinner hour, locking his magic bowls into a sturdy chest and waving down a passing fair-ward for advice on procuring a trustworthy guard for his wares until he came back.
Over at Siluia's booth the green baize curtain was up again.
Now the sun was down. Vagrant threads of light still sent their questing brightness down the rows of stalls. One fell on Scarron's hand as he held up one of the precious black bowls, admiring his own handiwork. Silver winked, a star in the lattice of night; her ring. Her pledge, and unredeemed before the sun set.
Scarron felt his heart begin to beat faster. There was a hard aching in his chest that he could not name. Golden eyes slanted up at him from the black wood netting.
He stowed the few coins left in the secret chamber of his nautilus and locked it away in a chest similar to the one the fat man used. Six black bowls went into the chest as well, each shrouded in soft leather. The seventh remained in his hand, a gift to give her when she honored her promise.
A kiss; a kiss that doubting souls would say he was too young to value. Siluia's phantom beauty had enchanted many men that day, but she had turned aside their whispered suggestions with cool grace. She had not turned him away; a ring, a pledge, a kiss. A promised kiss, and he was old enough to imagine its taste on his lips, sweet and cold as summer wine.
A quick bit of negotiation with the guard at the fat man's stall got Scarron his services for a fraction of the price—two adjoining stalls were as easy to mind as one. All secure, he presented himself at Siluia's stall.
"Siluia! Siluia!"
No answer. Scarron shifted from foot to foot, wondering whether she had shut up shop and gone off while he was readying the coins for Malfora. The silver ring on his finger burned cold, or maybe it was only the evening chill coming up from the river.
"Call louder, lad. She's in, but might be doesn't hear you." It was the toymaker from across the way. He too was going to find a meal, tossing off his words as he passed. The boy called her name again, and again had no reply.
Later he might blame his actions elsewhere. At the moment, he thought it was his own idea to softly pull aside the green curtain and slip into her stall. The candles stood in their perfect rows like ranks of ghostly soldiers. For a woman who had done so much business, her stocks seemed not at all depleted. Not one candle was missing from the shelves.
A line of glow seeped across the muddy floor to lap at Scarron's sandals. The second curtain rippled, showing strands of silver woven through the green. Beyond the curtain, Scarron heard voices: Siluia and a man.
“ —won't warn you again."
Laughter. "That robe makes you brave, but still you slink in to see me by the back way. Do you fear me even now, half of what I was?"
"Siluia, I don't have time for your games. Will you give it to me or not?"
"You think I still have it?" Her voice was arch, taunting. "You flatter yourself."
The man's voice grew harsh, with a deep undernote that made Scarron's legs tremble. "What else would you do with it? Destroy it, and you destroy yourself along with me.
"And you think I wouldn't have the courage for that? Maybe I've lived long enough. You certainly have."
A pause, then all the mirth gone out of her words. "No, Evro; you're too good a liar not to recognize another's lie. I have it, but you never shall. I've come to Ithkar to stay— forever! You ran from me, but I'll be faithful to you. A chance to enter the temple at your age, at such a rank— Well, many of your earthbound race would break a score of lovers' vows for the chance to fly so high. The wealth, the power, the knowledge ..."
The slap was loud as wood cracking in the fire.
"You dare . . ."
"I'll strike you again, Siluia; harder, if I like. I'll have you driven out of Ithkar tomorrow, or worse, if you don't give it back to me. Take off that brave face. All of your kind are cowardly at heart, except when lechery makes you bold. Lord Father Demetrios has songs that can rival your own for power. He'll know how to deal with you if I tell him what you truly are."
Her words came as a hiss. "And how will he deal with my most faithful lover?"
Evro chuckled. "Once he learns that I've picked up most of your pretty tricks, he'll forgive me, if only to learn them himself. I'm only sorry that you never taught me the spells of binding that you lay on your handworks. That would cast light on more than the temple pilgrims bargain for, these days!"
"I gave you what I did because I loved you. Love made me a fool, but not a total idiot. Some good sense told me not to give you every secret I had."
Scarron heard her laugh again, a laugh that twisted off into a sudden cry of pain. "Let me go!"
"Where is it, damn you? I'll tear this cursed stall to pieces and you with it! Give it back to me while you've got two unbroken hands, you witch!"
She was crying, struggling, and every breath she took spat out in hatred. "Never! Never!" Scarron's soul leaped out to her. The silver-shot curtain tore away, slashed in two by the woodcarver's knife he always wore. Beyond the curtain were blurs of white and blue and flame: Siluia fighting to be free of a temple priest's cruel hold, Evro's grim face melting to angry surprise, then splitting to a howl of outrage as Scarron's knife scored his cheek.
Scarron gave a wordless shout, a hoarse, exultant cry. The priest crossed his hands before his face to ward off further blows, stumbling backward, toppling racks where strips of emptied honeycomb waited for the candlemaker's caldron. He cursed loudly as the hem of his robe came inches from the fire lit beneath the black iron pot.
The boy felt battle hunger for the first time, more potent than any promised kiss. He would have driven Evro into the fire, but white hands held him back. Siluia seized his tunic from behind and would not let it go. Evro saw what she was doing and took courage to rush past them, out of the back of the stall.
Scarron was panting as if the fight had lasted ten times as long. "Why—why did you do that, Siluia? Why did you let him go?"
"Because you would have killed him." She touched his carver's blade. "And that would have been your death."
"Who is he? What does he want from you?"
Her eyes were warmer, mirrors of the flames beneath her caldron. She raised his chin with a touch and smiled. "Little busy-ears, what would you understand of lovers? No, don't scowl. There is no sin in lingering innocence, child."
"I'm no child!" Scarron jerked his head away. "I'm grown enough to protect you from him. I won't let him hurt you—not him or anyone!"
"Ahhh." Her glance strayed to the bubbling kettle. "So you would serve me? Make a vow never to betray my trust? So did Evro, and I believed him then. I believed him so much, loved him so well, that I took his word alone ... but gave him more. Our lives are bound, sweet Scarron. I made the proof of
it with my own hands, and sank half my magic into it. Half! So that without him near me, I am diminished."
"Magic? He called you a witch. Are you—?"
Her hands stole up to cradle his face. Waves of sweet coolness stole across his senses, and the world wavered like a candle flame. "Will that change what you feel for me? Will you not do what I think to ask? Will you be strong enough to part with a proof of love to equal mine?" Her lips brushed his, and all ties broke except the cord that tightened between those two. "Does what I am matter?"
"Where have you been? Thought you got killed." Malfora sounded pretty cheerful about it. She'd passed a warm night wrapped in both Scarron's blanket and her own. "When I came back, I had to pay off the guard you hired, so you better give me more pocket coin today. What a waste of money! He said he didn't see or hear a thing." She stretched the ground kinks out of her bones. By the dawn light she saw her brother leaning his back against a wagon wheel, staring at something in his lap. "What you got there?"
"Carving." He mumbled the word so badly that she made him repeat. "Open the stall yourself today; you know how." He took out his knife and breathed a prayer over the blade.
Malfora stole peeks at his work while she set up their wares. "That's not wood," she said. "What is it?" She got no answer. "Want something to catch the chips? Maybe 1 can sell them later—"
"There won't be any chips."
"You're loony. There's always chips from carving, even when you bought that piss-dear black wood for . . . Say, there's only six of those fancy bowls here. We sell one yesterday after I went to change?"
If Scarron intended to reply, he never got the chance. The early-rising merchants who shared that part of the fair heard a rumor of commotion issue from the temple guest house, rumble through the paths, and burst like a spring freshet before the candlemaker's stall. It was a party of twelve nobles, the lady Demaris and her nurse among them. The lady wept and groaned, her nurse only wept. The others in the party—lords and ladies both—took turns shouting for Siluia and telling the weepers to shut up.
Norton, Andre - Anthology Page 5
