"Yes? May I help you?" Siluia emerged and spied Demaris, still holding yesterday's candle, still lit. Two flames burned from one wick: great, small. The candlemaker nodded.
"What's all this witchery you've sold my daughter?" Lady Demaris's mother got right to the point, thrusting the men of her house aside. "She came home from her fairing, went to her chamber, and came shrieking out a moment later with this." She flicked her hand at the candle. "Why's it got her in hysterics, eh? And why in the names of the Three can't anyone extinguish the cursed thing?"
The formidable matron puffed at the double glow several times, then wet her fingers with spit and pinched it to drive home the point. The candle burned on, even when a dipperful of water was emptied over it. The gathering crowd muttered, eyeing the soft-spoken candlemaker.
"My lady, that will be for your daughter to say."
"None of your sauce. We've got laws at Ithkar Fair against evil sorceries, but if you'll make amends, we'll mention no more about it."
Siluia lowered her lashes. "My lady, I sold your daughter nothing, as witnesses will tell you. No coins changed hands.
That double flame was of her own kindling, and she must live with its light. But you see, a candle hates the darkness, and lies hate light. Bring truth to light and the candle may be extinguished."
“Truth! What truth?"
"Your daughter ..."
"Oh, Mama, forgive me!" Demaris tore herself away from her dithering nurse and hurtled into her mother's arms, pouring out a story whose juicier bits involved a certain maidenly error committed two months past. Her partner in misstep had been one of a troupe of wandering players. True to type, he had wandered farther off, but no sense in criticizing a young girl's fancy after the fact. Demaris knew soon enough that she'd need more than regret; a husband might be nice, for the child's sake. A husband, but one worthy of her station, and since Lord Yevri fancied her . . . and fancied himself an honorable man. ... At least her player-lover had taught Demaris some rudiments of acting before he vanished.
As she ended her story, a tear fell on the telltale candle. The double flame winked out. Lady Demaris sobbed wildly and hid her face in her mother's bosom.
The hoots and merriment of the mob rose in proportion to the discomfiture of Demaris's relatives. Feeling murderous, unable to turn her wrath on her own miserable child, the lady's mother lashed out elsewhere. "Lies! Sorcery! Summon the fair-wards! You'll pay for this insult, my girl!"
"Scarron! Scarron! Why are you hiding under there? Come out! They're calling for the wards! They're going to do something terrible to Siluia! Scarron!''' Malfora was jumping up and down on the wagon, making the wheels creak. Her brother only grunted and moved away, so that the jouncing wouldn't jar his arm.
The fair-wards were coming. One might assume they came in answer to the summons of Demaris's mother, but too many of the brass helmets gleamed together for that to be so, and a temple priest led them.
(In his place under the wagon, a skilled carver made a few final touches. Sleeplessness made him incautious, and he touched the knife itself. He cried in pain, cursed, sucked his fingers before finishing his masterwork. He had only touched the smooth flat of the blade, not the cutting edge. He cried out from burning, not cutting, pain.)
"My lord priest, this sorceress has worked a magic of slander—" Demaris's mother tried to make herself heard above her daughter's wails, to say nothing of the loud guffaws and crude remarks coming from the crowd.
“Enough.'' Evro held up his hand. "She'll come with us. Lord Father Demetrios has some questions to put to her before judgment. Take her."
The fair-wards moved forward to obey. They sought to herd her out of her stall between their lines, using their bronze-bound rods for that rough shepherding. The candle-maker fixed her eyes on the ground.
"You will not take me, Evro. As you would not take me for your lady and your bride, you will not take me for your prisoner."
(A youth in a green tunic crawled out from under a wagon, unnoticed. Shouldering his lanky body through the crowd, he soon stood in the foremost rank. There was a silver ring on his finger. He had given all the magic that would ever be his to weave a binding on that ring. That much she had taught him. In his arms he cradled something shaped like an elfin babe, shrouded in cloth of green and silver.)
The wards balked. The woman was one, and weak, but her voice held them away. Evro made an impatient sound in his throat. "Will you take her!"
"No," said Scarron. The ring was in one hand, the veiled thing in the other. A cold wind stabbed into the heart of the crowd and whipped away the shrouding so that afterward no one could recall that the boy had spoken, only that he held a work of perfection.
It was a bear, a monstrous white bear out of the north, captured to the life in wax. Gently, swiftly, while the people still stared and the unchipped wax was yet soft enough, Scarron thrust the silver ring into the nostrils of the beast.
He heard his sister's scream first, but she was too far back in the crowd to have witnessed the change. Bronze-bound rods scattered, merchants fled into the dubious shelter of their stalls, and idlers ran away shouting for protection. But who would protect the protectors? The fair-wards were the first to run yowling for help against the silver bear of flesh and fur that reared up in Evro's place and bawled its terror and confusion.
Light as a dancing flame, Siluia leaped to drag the beast down by the silver nose ring. She swung up onto its back and dug in her heels, drumming the bear to a gallop that scattered every sensible soul from their path. The fair-wards gaped, then remembered their duty. True, they remembered it only after the bear had a healthy head start, but tardy pursuit was better than none.
It was the wildest hue and cry Ithkar Fair had seen in years. People of all callings spilled away from the charging bear and his jubilant rider only to swarm back into the swelling mob that followed the fair-wards. At the western boundary palings the bear leaped over and cleared them sweet as any stallion, but the wary hunters had to give up or go around to the gates. Half the fair-wards called it quits ! there, as did most of the civilians, but there were enough I diehards left to continue the chase.
Alas, these determined few dwindled, one by one falling breathless by the way. By the time a mounted troop of reinforcements cantered along the canal to the Western Road, all they met was a scarlet-faced fair-ward and a grimy little girl who had stopped to get a sharp pebble out from between her toes.
“Don't bother." The fair-ward shed his brass helmet and mopped his brow. "Long gone. That way." Going the way he pointed, the leader of the mounted men soon reached the river bank. Sweeping the terrain with his eyes, it took him several passes before he spotted the lad crouched on the brink. Green tunic, brown hair, the earth colors, and his perfect stillness hid him.
"Boy! A witch and a huge bear, did you see 'em? Did they cross over?"
Scarron watched the rushing waters. "They didn't make it across." His voice was hollow.
"Not surprised. In my old town, they said running water washes out most evils. Thanks, boy." He turned his steed's head and trotted away just as Malfora found her brother.
"No witch." When he spoke, he gave no sign that he knew his sister. He would have told the same tale to the first soul with ear to hear. "I threw the candle in after them, ring and all. He's hers again, and all her old powers with him."
Malfora began to cry. "She was so nice, and now she's drowned!"
"Drowned?" Still he watched the waves. "She can never drown, nor anyone in her keeping. The shape of magic she chose for him was her own idea. A bear, a fitting shape; after all, this is her river. But I had to work the shape's change in the wax that held them. She loved him, so she gave half her powers into the candle, binding them to one another. I had to carve without cutting, melt and mold the wax gently with a knife that burned. It was her life she gave me to reshape. If my hand had slipped ..."
He shuddered, casting off a dream.
"We'd better get back. No one's wat
ching our stall." He stood up and offered Malfora his hand. She took it reluctantly, leery of the strange emptiness she saw in his eyes. "Maybe the fat man's keeping a neighborly eye on our things." He tried to sound jovial, but a child's instinct was sharp as any knife to cut away a mask. The old Scarron was gone.
As they started east, Malfora glanced a last time at the swiftly flowing Bear River. Abruptly she pulled from
Scarron's clasp to point and cry: "Look there!" She danced on the grass in her excitement.
Something glowed on the bosom of the river. It bobbed and floated across the current's pull to beach itself in the grass at the foot of the river bank. He saw the light, burning with a truer flame than any marshbane torch, calling him. He slid down the bank and took it from the shallows. The waters of the Bear stroked his hand as he retrieved their offering: a bowl of cobwebbed night; a strand of pearls to trickle through Malfora's fingers; a single candle kindled to a star; a silver ring. A gift.
He slipped the ring back onto his finger. He had filled it with all the love he had to offer her, all the magic that would ever be his, and used that force to work the spell to save her. Love. He had poured all his heart's love willingly into her ring: love and all its changing power. He had emptied himself gladly, a beeswax comb drained dry of sweetness to be melted down and molded to the candlemaker's will. For her sake he had done it, but now she was whole again, needing the strength of no other. Her elemental sendings swirled incandescent out of the ring and flowed back into him. The world glowed more brightly than any candle.
Silently Scarron exulted in the miracle filling him. He scooped up his little sister and swung her around, the pearls trailing, Malfora shrieking with delight.
"They're worth a fortune," gasped the girl once he set her down again. She couldn't take her eyes from them. "Oh, Scarron, we're rich!"
"Rich enough for you to start acting like less of a fair-shrike when we get home? Come, Malfora. Not all the pearls in the river bed can keep off what those clouds are bringing."
A line of purple and gray came rolling up from the west. Brother and sister ran, but the storm was faster. The first pattering drops quenched the burning candle left behind on the river bank and caught up with them just when they had gained the safety of the palings.
Malfora gave a small mew of distress when the storm broke, and all the merchants cursed the contrary weather that drove off pilgrim buyers. But over the sound of curses came joyful laughter. Scarron stood rooted in the rain, head flung back, arms wide, letting it wash over him gladly. People stared to see such a young witling, unable to know that for him, every drop of water was a kiss, every line of rain a thousand sweet caresses from the white hands of his first, his best beloved.
Rain at Ithkar Fair.
DEMON LUCK
Craig Shaw Gardner
Gosha was truly the luckiest man in all the world. To be going to the Fair at Ithkar, ah, that was the sort of pleasure only found in dreams. And with what he had to sell, the finest fruits and vegetables in the entire Zoe Valley, could he leave the fair any less than a rich man?
The late summer sun beat down on his shoulders, warming them under his rough shirt. Small clouds of dust rose about the hooves of the horse that drew the wagon, and motes danced beneath Gosha's feet. The fields to either side of the road were full of butterflies, all yellow and orange, and every tree seemed to hold a bird that called to them as the merchant's wagon passed. Today the world smiled on Gosha, and Gosha smiled in return. What could be better?
"I agree entirely," said a voice close by Gosha's ear.
The merchant started and spun about. A small man, about four feet tall, sat next to him in the wagon. He was fairly well dressed, with quite a dazzling smile, made all the more so by the fact that both the man's clothing and skin were matching shades of blue.
"Close your mouth, please," the blue man said. "Gosha, this is your lucky day. And I am your good-luck demon."
Gosha turned away and looked at the road. The same gray mare still pulled the wagon. The same yellow fields lined either side, filled with the same brilliant butterflies.
He looked to his right again. The blue man smiled.
"Good-luck demon?" Gosha asked.
The blue man nodded.
Now Gosha considered himself a pragmatic man. One had to be able to assess a situation and act quickly upon it if one was to be successful in the mercantile arts. Therefore, should one find oneself engaged in conversation with a small blue man, whether one believed this was really happening or not, one should attempt to get all the information one could. Therefore, Gosha said: "I thought demons generally brought bad luck."
The demon nodded gravely. "A popularly held misconception."
Gosha persisted: "But wouldn't I have heard of good-luck demons? In this hard world, a magical creature who brings good luck is almost too much to be believed."
"Exactly!" The demon grabbed Gosha's hand and pumped it vigorously. "Not only are you a lucky merchant, Gosha, but an extremely canny one as well. Lucky demons are one of the best-kept secrets in the realm. Let me phrase it thusly: If you were fortunate enough to have something like me to give you an edge over your fellow merchants, would you spread it around?"
Gosha shook his head slowly.
"But I'm being rude!" The demon grabbed Gosha's hand once again. "The name's Hotpoint. Pleased to make your acquaintance."
Hotpoint? Gosha supposed it was a fair name for a demon. That is, if he supposed anything at all. In a few short moments, he had gone from feeling one with the world into a state of total confusion. Gosha studied the short blue fellow at his side. What was the proper response to meeting a demon? The most proper one he could think of was to jump from the wagon and run screaming into the fields. But then what would happen to his fruit? And what about his son, fast asleep in the back of the wagon?
He hadn't given a thought to Lum since the demon's arrival. Nor had Lum taken any notice of what was happening. Not surprising; once the boy slept, it would take a hundred demons to rouse him. Peiiiaps, when the boy came round, he and Gosha could subdue Hotpoint. But what if the demon were truly what he said he was?
Hotpoint continued to talk as Gosha mulled over the problem. The demon commented on the beauty of the day, which he could appreciate despite the fact that, in his homeland, the standards were somewhat different. Hotpoint went on to praise Gosha's fruit at some length: the beautiful color, the absence of worms and bruises, the wonderful shapes, so round and succulent. Gosha began to worry about the size of the demon's appetite.
"Dear Gosha," the demon remarked, "instead of looking at me, you might do well to watch the road."
Gosha looked about to see a horse-drawn cart coming full gallop toward the wagon. The merchant reined in his own horse at once. "Whoa! Whoa!" cried the other driver. There was a substantial crash.
"Blight and war!" Gosha cursed as he jumped from his wagon. The collision had pushed the two right wheels into the ditch at the side of the road. The cart that had collided with the wagon sat next to it, minus both one wheel and its driver, who sat dazed in the ditch mud, surrounded by Gosha's fruit.
"What have you done?" Gosha cried. "Your carelessness has ruined half my goods! What will I sell in Ithkar?"
The other man groaned. He was short and stout, and, though he was dressed entirely in gray, Gosha could tell, from the cut of the clothes and the fine gold stitching, that the man's wardrobe had been produced by the finest tailors in Ithkar. The nerve of someone of his station being careless on the road!
The stout man looked up at Gosha. His eyes seemed to have gotten crossed in the fall. There was something in his gaze, though, that made the merchant hesitate.
"Are you all right, sir?" Gosha said in a somewhat softer voice.
"Hm?" The other man uncrossed his eyes. "Yes, yes, never felt better." He rubbed at the mud covering his face. He succeeded more in distributing it rather than removing it. "K'shew's the name. I was hoping to be at Ithkar Fair myself this year
until . . ."He paused and coughed. "Until something came up."
Gosha reached out a hand and helped the other man to his feet. "Something came up?" he prompted.
"Yes." K'shew smiled, then grimaced as he tried to walk. "I found I must perform an errand"—he paused again and looked up the road in the direction he had come—"of the utmost urgency!"
"But you've hurt yourself and your wagon. Surely you can rest a bit."
"No, no!" The stout fellow shook his head so violently that his hat fell off. He grabbed it in midair and jammed it across his bald pate. "Most urgent! Most urgent!"
K'shew turned to survey the damage to his cart. He cleared his throat, made three quick passes in the air, and said an extremely long word so rapidly that Gosha couldn't quite catch it. There was a flash of golden light. When Gosha opened his eyes, he saw that K'shew's cart was whole again.
Gosha took a step back. A magician! He should have realized that anyone with an apostrophe in his name had to be important. Now this was an entirely different matter. It was one thing to feel sorry for an addled old man who'd fallen in the mud, but magicians who have accidents should be fully prepared to pay for their mistakes. Gosha pointed to the produce on the ground.
"The fruit," he intoned.
"Yes, a pity." K'shew frowned. "If I hadn't been in such a tizzy . . . well, let's see. I could magically make it whole again. No, no, they don't like that sort of thing in Ithkar, do they? Wouldn't want to get you in bad with the temple people. I guess there's no helping it."
Lum chose that moment to climb from the back of the wagon. He stretched his long legs and arms and jumped to the ground. With his skinny body and the yellow hair always in his eyes, he reminded his father of nothing so much as a rather untidy broom.
Norton, Andre - Anthology Page 6
