The Folk Of The Air

by Peter S. Beagle

  Hamid shook his head. “The Whalemas Tourney is weird, man. Maybe it’s the being in public or the challenging of the King, the betting—I don’t know. It’s just always like this, everything all twitchy and feverish, all day.” He was dressed as richly as any of the nobles, in flowing black and gold, with a black turban. He nodded abruptly toward the double throne, now flanked by the two cornet players. “Look at Bohemond.”

  King Bohemond was clad, not in his Byzantine-cut robe of state, but in armor, with a light blue cloak over him and a great helm in his lap. His round face, always too large and naked for the crown, showed no expression as he looked on Benedictis de Griffin, Raoul of Carcassonne, and Simon Widefarer; but the gym-teacher face of Queen Leonora stared at those knights, and at every other, with wide, numbed eyes and a jumping mouth. When the cornets sounded again, she put her hand on her husband’s mailed arm. Bohemond never turned his head.

  “It really matters,” Farrell said in wonder. “She looks as if he’s really going out to be killed, and she’ll be sent into slavery. Hecuba and Priam, for God’s sake.”

  Hamid rolled up the scroll and stuck it in his sash. “You still don’t understand,” he said without looking at Farrell. He strode away to stand with his back to the throne and sing St. Whale’s blessing in three languages on the day and the Tourney. When his singing ended, the first fighters came into the lists.

  None of the early bouts involved King Bohemond. The fighters were boys, new-made knights or else squires seeking knighthood on the field. They circled, they lunged, they left themselves as exposed as the practice posts in the backyards, and frequently they took one another off-balance and rolled to earth embraced, losing their helms. Few of their combats lasted longer than three minutes, and the referee—one Sir Roric the Uncouth, who wore a full bearskin and a pair of plaid shorts—laughed and called jokes to a wincing John Erne as he named the victors. All around the edges of the lists and on the packed balconies of the Waverly, people in jogging suits and tennis whites cheered and clapped indiscriminately and kept trying to get their pictures taken with someone in armor.

  But out of those first matches the Ronin Benkei, John Erne’s fragile-looking Nisei student, came stalking in armor like jewelry—iron and leather plates laced by cords of amber, amethyst, silver, and emerald into a skin as supple and glowing and adamant as the skin of a dragon. There was gold lacquer on the leather pieces, and a thread of some rainbow inlay dancing through the iron; and two scabbards made of lacquered wood, one long and one short, thrust through his silken red girdle. He wore no helmet but a half-mask of iron, snouted and fanged like a dragon, that covered his face from the bridge of the nose down, leaving his eyes showing like black inlay in his pale skin. He issued his challenges in silence, by pointing with his longsword, which he gripped in both hands during combat. Farrell heard the deepening murmur going among the nobles as they watched the Ronin Benkei scythe down three young knights in a row, battering them effortlessly from every side, like a mountain wind. After the third knight fell, to breathe like an asthmatic the rest of the day from a two-handed blow under the ribs, Farrell said aloud, hardly knowing it, “When did he get that good?”

  A yappy giggle, and Aiffe said beside him, “Hey, you talked first. A new era in the relationship.” She wore a velvet gown that was brown at the first look, and afterwards more and more charged with shifting foxy goldenness as the breeze quickened and the light changed. There were lilies and vineleaves traced in gold on her gown, and a golden girdle circled her just below her breasts. Her hair was piled demurely over her temples, dressed in a little net with white beads.

  “Maybe he got good this summer,” she said. “Maybe it was a thousand years ago, doing Zen stuff in the moutains in Japan. You don’t know.” Farrell stared at her. “Well, you don’t,” she said. “You can’t tell for sure if that’s really him behind that dorky thing he’s got on. He could be anybody. He could be one of mine, even.”

  The Ronin Benkei was looking slowly around the lists to choose another opponent, as was his right under the laws of the Whalemas Tourney. His glance halted briefly first on the tense face of Garth de Montfaucon, and then on King Bohemond, who nodded and half rose from his seat, while Queen Leonora looked down, gripping her thighs. But the Ronin Benkei only slid his sword back into its shining scabbard, bowed quite deeply to the King and Queen, and walked out of the lists. Farrell saw him enter a small pavilion that flew neither banner nor pennon.

  “I know who you are, anyway,” he said to Aiffe. “You’re Rosanna Berry and you have to take algebra over this year and you had too many cuts in P.E. and you still break out if you eat one candy bar and you still bite your nails. And a man is dead because of you, and you really think you’re magic.”

  Her eyes changed color. They had been tranquil enough blue-green as she spoke, with tiny darknesses; but now a red gold grew in them, as in her gown, brighter and brighter, though the skin around them went tight and bloodless. She said in a whisper, “You are so fucking right, I’m magic. You wait, okay, you wait, you’ll see how magic I am.” She bit her finger and ran, and he saw her stand beside her father, who was in the act of challenging the Spanish knight Don Claudio. The breeze furled Garth’s short blue cloak hard about his body and then whipped it loose again, so that his chain mail flashed on and off in the sunlight like running water.

  Farrell made his rendezvous with Ben, and they moved through the Tourney together, trying to keep unobtrusive track of Aiffe and Nicholas Bonner’s own movements. This proved extremely difficult, since Aiffe and Nicholas—plainly by design—hardly crossed each other’s paths all afternoon. Ben’s civilian dress left him free of spectators’ attentions; but Farrell was forever being waylaid and posed with Mr. and Mrs. Bringle of Highland Park, Michigan, and being asked if little Stacy could hold the lute, just for a moment. By the time he broke away, he would have lost Ben as well as their quarry and have to go lurking after any number of plumed hats and tawny velvet gowns before he glimpsed them again. Nicholas Bonner had come in the guise of a juggler and could sometimes be tracked by following children, who came spilling after him as he wandered, weaving four oranges back and forth before his face. Diamonds were painted on his cheeks, and tiny daggers under his eyes.

  In the lists, the combats surged one after the other, rolling up and down amid cheers, laughter, the ceaseless clacking of weapons, and the ringing thump of armored bodies falling to earth. Five squires attained knighthood that day; one broke a rib in a greatsword match, and the Irish Lord Mathgamhain broke his right hand in defeating the Tuscan Duke Cesare il Diavolo. Several knights of varying renown challenged King Bohemond; and Farrell was only one of many surprised then, for he rose from the throne each time, handed his crown to Leonora, and fought like a wolverine, swollen with desperation. He cut down not only Raoul of Carcassonne but Duke Benedictis as well, leaping at them almost before they had their feet planted, giving them no time to understand his frenzy of courage. Queen Leonora looked on with her eyes full of tears, as if she faced into a great wind.

  The Ronin Benkei never challenged him. He went in and out of his little pavilion like an ancient clock figure and he fought with nobles and squires at seeming random, winning each time. Ben and Farrell nibbled at Cornish pasties, St. Ives beefy buns, and pot herb pie, forgetting themselves in watching two lugger falcons sailing above the highest towers of the hotel, now and then swinging grandly down and away again over the Tourney. Time passed as they did, in gentle, rustling slices.

  In the end, it was Garth de Montfaucon who brought King Bohemond down. The combat was brief and unmemorable, except for the fact that Bohemond clearly went into it with no hope at all. Aiffe and Nicholas Bonner were raucously prominent on the sidelines, cheering Garth on, and Bohemond seemed to have his attention fixed more on them than on his contemptuously nimble opponent. When he struck sadly at Garth, Farrell saw what Lovita had been talking about, for the wooden blade turned on the air and Garth was away, laughing. The same thing h
appened again and again, until the final bustle of swords that sent King Bohemond’s helm flying from his shoulders as he toppled slowly to sprawl on his side. When he rose, he bowed to Garth, wearily but graciously, and took Garth’s hand between his own in token of fealty.

  The roar of acclaim had barely begun before Aiffe was at the throne, snatching the crown from the hands of Queen Leonora and turning to cry, as pitilessly joyous as if the words were literally true, “The king is dead—long live the king! Long live King Garth de Montfaucon!”

  As long as he lived, Farrell held that strange moment motionless in his head—a stained-glass window in which a transfigured, bride-faced Aiffe forever leaned down to crown her father, as the falcons banked low above them and Leonora supported her defeated lord. In the background, the nobles of the League for Archaic Pleasures swayed close, painted in forgotten colors and looking on with unreadable, obsolete expressions. It was his last vision of many people he never saw again.

  The Ronin Benkei did not fit into the window-world at all. He stood outside, an intruder from another art form altogether in his dragon armor, and he pointed his long, slightly curved sword straight across the composition at the barely crowned King Garth. No one noticed him for some little while; and then there was an immense furor and much archaic swearing, since no new king had ever been challenged within minutes of his accession. Garth’s supporters demanded an ad hoc meeting of the College of Heralds, but a surprising opposition jeered so lustily at this that Garth himself stepped splendidly forward to announce his acceptance of the match. He waved the crown back into Aiffe’s hands, settled his famous black helm once again, and was hardly in the lists when the Ronin Benkei screeched like train wheels and came at him.

  Julie’s hand was unmistakable in Farrell’s, the right forefinger and thumb lightly calloused from years of drawing, the palm as broad as his own, strong and cool. Farrell said, “Where’s Micah?” without turning his head.

  “Fishing. He’s recognized three more people this week, and today they all came and took him out on the Bay. I think he’s almost all the way back.”

  “That’s nice.” She dug her nails hard into the back of his hand, saying, “I thought you were done being snotty. I came looking for you because I thought you could use some help. Whatever Aiffe’s been working up in the lab, the Whalemas Tourney is where she tries it out, always. This one is not over yet.”

  At Farrell’s shoulder, Ben said very quietly, “Damn right, it isn’t over. What the hell is happening here?”

  Farrell had never seen Garth de Montfaucon defeated in armed combat. For that matter, he had never seen the knuckly-faced man even forced to fight on the defensive; but all Garth’s work was defense from the first moment that he struck out at the bouncing, weaving, shrieking, dragonfaced fury that did everything but somersault back and forth over his head, as Japanese demons do. A feint and a flurry, and he was down a leg, kneeling behind his shield—another lunge, almost bending double, and his sword fell silently at Leonora’s feet. The Ronin Benkei shouted in triumph, hammering Garth’s shield back and back until it thudded against the black helm.

  “This is not possible,” Ben said. “Aiffe would never let Garth lose like this.”

  “She did it last year,” Julie reminded him, but Ben shook his head, craning forward on tiptoe. “That was different. Why take him all the way back to the kingship and then drop him five minutes later? I don’t see her doing that.”

  “Maybe you’re not seeing her at all,” Farrell said. Aiffe was clinging to Nicholas Bonner on the sidelines, shrilling for her father as fiercely as ever as he scrambled on his knees to get to the sword. The point of his shield left a line in the earth all the way to Leonora’s feet. The Ronin Benkei danced and jeered, but let him reach his weapon. Farrell said, “Her ears are wrong.” When Ben and Julie looked at him, he said, “Well, they are. Somewhere in the last hour or so, they’ve gone all pointy and elfin—very pretty, really, and not hers. Something wrong about his ears, too. Quit staring at me like that. I just notice ears.”

  Like Bohemond before him, Garth seemed unable to concentrate on his opponent, but was yearning in mute disbelief toward the figures of Aiffe and Nicholas Bonner. The Ronin Benkei parried a blind, desperate cut with one edge of his sword, struck the flailing shield aside with the other, and toppled Garth de Montfaucon with a blow that rang on the black helm as if there were no head inside. Leonora’s cry of avenging delight could be heard even above the mighty yell of the Ronin Benkei.

  Ben was moving before Garth had hit the ground, trampling the scarlet flowers of St. Whale as he forced his way across the lists. Farrell and Julie followed him as closely as they could, holding hands to keep together. Ignoring alike the cheering spectators and the muddy, boisterous throng of warriors trooping to do ritual homage to the second new king of the Tourney—Farrell could see Hamid ibn Shanfara standing on the musicians’ dais, coolly improvising an entirely different victory paean from the one he had expected to deliver—Ben marched straight toward the boy and girl who stood watching Garth get to his feet, took them each by the shoulder, turned them to face him and said, “Oh, Jesus Christ, sonofabitch, let’s get out of here.” His own face was the color of an old sidewalk.

  Close to, they looked very little like Aiffe and Nicholas Bonner. Close to, everything about them—age, features, dress, gender—pulled apart into fuzziness and shimmering smudge, a newspaper photograph blown up beyond clarity. They smiled and moved their mouths and made human sounds, and no one else seemed to notice that they were no more human than cream cheese. Looking at them for very long made Farrell feel dizzy and seasick. He thought he would die if they should happen to touch him.

  “Simulacra,” Ben said tonelessly. “The old Norse wizards made things like that; Egil knew about them. Easy enough to create, but they go bad fast. These will rot away into air by sundown—she only wanted them to hold us here for a while. Worked just fine.” He was gripping Farrell and Julie like a pair of hammers, using them to batter a way through the crowd sweeping across the tourney field. Farrell sheltered his lute and kept looking backward, straining for one more glimpse of the simulacra, although he dreaded the idea of their soft, grinning, bloodless images sticking to his retinas. Then the three of them were out on the street, gasping under the parking lot portcullis, and Julie was saying, “My bike’s parked on Escalona, I’ll meet you at the house.” But Ben held tightly onto her arm as she turned away.

  “You meet us right here. You are not to go to the house alone.” His voice was as gray as his face, so low that the late-afternoon traffic all but drowned it, but Julie looked at him and nodded, and Ben let her go.

  She was waiting astride the BSA when they returned in Madame Schumann-Heink. Ben leaned out of the window and called to her. “Take the back road, around the hill.” The BSA made a sound like feeding time in hell and leaped forward past the tents and pennons and TV trucks on the lawn of the Waverly. The two falcons were still circling above the hotel, and Farrell could see them in his rear-view mirror long after the blue-and-gold Sagittarius of the League for Archaic Pleasures had sunk from view.

  “Why this way? It’s no quicker.” The BSA was flying ahead of them on the laneless foothill road, dipping in and out of traffic like a darning needle, committing Farrell to a steady flow of criminal offenses just to keep Julie in sight.

  Ben said only, “Yeah, it is,” the words half muffled by his fist as he crouched forward against the dashboard. His other hand kept coming back to the gearshift, gripping it hard enough to make the rusty metal creak like rope, no matter how many times Farrell slapped it away.

  Farrell said, to be saying something, “Those things, those doubles, she did a pretty good job. If she hadn’t tried to improve on herself a bit—”

  “I told you, that shit is easy.” Ben’s voice was angry and insulting, unraveling like the simulacra. “Sorcerer’s apprentice stuff, goddamn training exercises. Will you pass that senile moron now, for Christ’s sake?”


  “Will you give me my goddamn gearshift back?” Farrell swung out and around a quarter-mile of station wagon, whose driver promptly speeded up, making a three-lane freeway out of the road for a brief but thrilling period.

  Beside him, too bitterly frightened to pay any respect to imminent death, Ben muttered, “She is not that good, she is just not that good. Sia could butter the walls with her.” Farrell passed a truck and a schoolbus on a blind curve, because Madame Schumann-Heink was at her very best going downhill.

  A long string of tarnished-silver clouds suddenly jolted into motion all together, exactly as if a train were towing them. That was the only warning Farrell had before the wind hit, making the VW shudder and boom, like the time the bear smelled my tuna fish in Yosemite. Madame Schumann-Heink wallowed almost to a stop until he threw her into second gear and struggled on down the slope, concentrating on nothing but keeping her from going over. The rain courteously held off long enough for them to reach the bottom of the decline and start up the other side; then the trees went out and the windshield turned to cement. Madame Schumann-Heink’s headlights only really worked in top gear, and her wipers were overmatched in a heavy dew. Farrell spread himself over the wheel, navigating by the lights coming toward him and silently reminding Kannon that he knew a friend of hers.

  Ben was frantic from the moment the rain started, screaming at Aiffe and Farrell alike, while Madame Schumann-Heink rolled and sputtered and chattered her transmission and kept going. Farrell would have missed the BSA entirely if an approaching headlight had not picked it out, almost upside down in a manzanita bush a little way from the road, with Julie trying to pull her legs free of it. He stamped on the brakes, which floored faster than the accelerator ever did, skidded suicidally enough to shake Ben back to functional sanity, and pulled up at last with one tire in a ditch and a great many total strangers honking for his blood. At that point, give or take a little, the hail began.