The Magician of Karakosk: Tales from the Innkeeper's World

by Peter S. Beagle

  It was different on the second floor. Deepsea cold, it was, and thick with twilight: old stale mushy twilight filling our eyes and ears and nostrils, like when you get smothered in the bedding when you’re asleep, and then that’s all you can dream. The breathing was all around us now, no louder, but quickening, eager. There wasn’t another sound anywhere in the world. Sirit Byar stopped on the landing. Clearly, loudly even, he said, “Jailly Doura.”

  The breathing never faltered. Sirit Byar said again, “Jailly Doura. I am here.”

  No answer. Where we stood, I could make out a chair, a wall, another chair, a gray face floating in the air, the gray mouth of a corridor. Sirit Byar looked left and right, trying to guess where the breathing might be coming from. My eyes were growing used to the dimness now—I saw that the floating face was a painting hanging on the wall, and I saw other paintings, and lamps and braziers as tall as me, taller, all unlit, and a great dark chandelier swinging overhead. The corridor lay straight ahead of us, with high double doors on either hand. Sirit Byar said, “This way,” and went forward like a man moving in his own house in full day. I hurried after him. I didn’t want to be left behind, left alone in the moon.

  He never looked at any of the doors, only strode along until the corridor bent right and opened out into a kind of—what?—well, like an indoor courtyard, I suppose. There must have been an opening to the sky somewhere, because the twilight was more watery here, but I still couldn’t see as far as the walls of the place, and the little warm night wind I felt on my face now and then made me wonder if it had any walls. There were a couple of benches, and there were pale statues in alcoves—and, of all the bloody things, a tree, set right into the floor, right in the middle of the room. A sesao, I think, or it might have been a red mouri, what do I know about trees? I certainly don’t know how Aung Jatt ever watered and nourished the thing, but its trunk disappeared in darkness, and its branches reached out almost as far as the bench where Sirit Byar had calmly sat down and begun tuning the kiit. I stood. I wanted my feet under me in that house, I knew that much.

  The breathing still sounded so close I thought I could feel it sometimes, and yet I couldn’t even be sure where it was coming from. Sirit Byar looked up into the tree branches and said, “Do you remember this song, Jailly Doura?” He touched the kiit with the heel of his hand, to get a sort of deep sigh out of all the strings, and began to sing.

  I knew the song. So do you—if there’s one song of Sirit Byar’s that the wind carried everywhere, and that clung where it landed like a cocklebur, it was “Where’s My Shoe?” Right, that funny, ridiculous song about a man who keeps losing things—his shoe, his wig, his spectacles, his false teeth, his balls, his wife—and that’s the way people sing it in the taverns. But the melody’s a sad one, if you whistle it over slowly, and people don’t always sing the very last verses, because those are about misplacing your faith, your heart. Nobody ever sang it the way Sirit Byar sang it that night, quiet and gentle, with the kiit bouncing happily along, running circles all around the words. I can’t listen to it now, never, not since that time.

  He spoke to the tree again, saying, “Do you remember? You always liked that song—listen to this now.” And his voice, that damn fisherman’s growl of his, sounded like a boy’s voice, and you’d have thought he’d never trusted anyone with his songs before.

  He sang “The Woodcutter’s Wife” next, that odd thing about an old woman who doesn’t want to die without hearing someone, anyone, say, “You’re my dear friend, and I love you.” Anyway, she goes from her husband to her children, then to her brothers and sisters, and finally hears the words from a tired village whore, who’ll say anything for money. And yet, when she does say it for money, somehow it comes out true, and the old woman dies happy. Not a song I’d choose, was it me trying to woo a madwoman out of her tree, but he knew what he was doing. About songs, he always knew what he was doing.

  I think it was “The Good Folk” next, and then “The Old Priest and the Old God.” By then it had gotten so dark in that strange courtyard that I couldn’t see the tree, let alone Sirit Byar. He took flint and steel out of one pocket, a candle end from the other, and made a little sputtering light that he stood up on the bench beside him. He sang the song about the lady made out of flowers, and he sang “Thou,” the one he wrote for his sister, and even my favorite, the one about the man and the Fox in the Moon. Never moved from where he sat in his tatter of candlelight, no more than I did. I just stood very still and listened to him singing, old song on new, one after another. I could hear Jailly Doura’s heart beating somewhere near, as well as her breathing, both quick as a bird’s—or a shukri’s—and one time I was sure I could smell her, like faraway water. Twice Sirit Byar asked, “Will you show yourself, Jailly Doura?” but no chance of that. So he just sang on to someone he couldn’t see, making his magic, drawing her in through the dark, so slowly, the way you can sometimes charm a dream into letting you remember it. That’s magic, too.

  Then he sang the lullaby. The one he’d been practicing every night for two years. I remember a bit of it, just a little.

  Don’t fall asleep,

  don’t close your eyes—

  everything happens at night.

  Don’t you sleep—

  as soon as you slumber,

  the sun starts to ripen,

  the flowers tell stories….

  She made a sound. Not a moan, not a cry, not anything with a name or a shape. Just put down that she tried very hard not to make it. It came out of her anyway.

  When she hit him, she knocked the kiit out of his hands. That time he couldn’t save it—rugs or no rugs, I heard it crack and split, heard eighteen double courses yowl against stone. I just caught a lightning flash of her in the candlelight: matted gray hair flying, eyes like gashes in dead flesh, gaunt arms flailing out of control, beating her own head as much as Sirit Byar’s. Something bright flickered in her hands against his throat. The candle fell over and went out.

  The darkness was so heavy, I felt myself bending under it. I said, “Jailly Doura, don’t hurt him. Please, don’t hurt him.” I could hear the kiit strings still thrashing and jangling faintly, but nothing more, not even the dreadful breathing. Nothing more until Sirit Byar began to sing again.

  Don’t you sleep—

  the marsh-goats are singing,

  the fish are all dancing,

  the river asks riddles….

  You couldn’t have told that he was singing past a dagger, or a broken piece of glass, or whatever she had been saving for him all this long while. He sounded the way he always did—gruff and south coast, and a little slower than the beat, and not caring about anything in the world but the song. He might have been back in the Miller’s Joy, sitting on a table, singing it to fighting, bawling sots; he might have been trying it over to himself as we trudged down some evening road looking for a place to sleep. He sounded like Sirit Byar.

  He sang it through to the end, the lullaby, so I knew she hadn’t killed him yet, but that was all I did know. I couldn’t see anything, I couldn’t hear anything, except the footsteps beginning to shuffle slowly toward me. They dragged a little, as though she’d somehow taken on Sirit Byar’s limp. I’d have run—all bloody right, of course I’d have run, that’s just good sense, that’s different from fear—but in that crushing dark the steps were coming from everywhere, the way the breathing had been at first. My knees wouldn’t hold me up. I sat down and waited.

  Close to, she didn’t smell like a distant river at all, but like any old hill woman, like my father. She smelled lifelong tired, lifelong dirty, she smelled of clothes sweated in and slept in until they’ve just died, you understand me? I know that smell; I was born and raised to it, and I’d smell just like that now if I hadn’t run off with Sirit Byar. What chilled my bowels was the notion that a wealthy madwoman, prowling a grand house among terrified servants, should smell like home.

  When I felt her standing over me, with the stiff, cold ends
of that hair trailing across the back of my neck, I said loudly, “I am Mircha Del, of Davlo. You should know that if you’re going to kill me.” Then I just sat there, feeling out with my skin for whatever she had in her hand.

  Her breath on my cheek was raw and old and stagnant, a sick animal’s breath. I closed my eyes, even in the darkness, the way you do when you’re hoping the sheknath or the rock-targ will think you’re dead. I was ready for her teeth, for her long, jagged nails, but the next thing I felt was her arms around me.

  She rocked me, chicken-wrist. Jailly Doura held me in her sad, skinny arms and bumped me back and forth against her breast, pushing and tugging on me as though she were trying to loosen a tree stump in the ground. Likely she didn’t remember at all how you rock somebody, but then I don’t remember anybody ever rocking me in my life, except her, so I wouldn’t ever have known the right way. I did have an idea that it was supposed to be more comfortable, but it wasn’t bad. And the breath wasn’t so awful, either, when you got used to it, nor that hair all down my face. What was bad was the little whimpering sound, so soft that I didn’t truly hear it but felt it in my body, the broken crooning that never quite became tears but just shivered and shivered on the edge. That was bad, but I kept my eyes closed tight and helped her rock me, and Sirit Byar began to sing again.

  It doesn’t matter what he sang. l know some of the songs in my bones to this day—bloody well should, after all—and there were others I’d never heard before and never will again, no matter. What matters is that he sang all night long, sitting by his shattered kiit, with a madwoman’s grieving for his only applause. Jailly Doura went on rocking me in her arms, and Sirit Byar sang about merrows and farmwives and wandering Narsai tinkers, and I’ll be damned if I didn’t fall off to sleep—only a little, only for a moment now and then—as though they were really my parents putting me to bed, just the way they did every night. And stone Azdak only knows what Aung Jatt thought was going on upstairs.

  Dawn came suddenly, or maybe I’d been dozing again. It was like staring through rain, but I could see the courtyard around us—there were walls, of course, and a few narrow windows, and the tree wasn’t that big—and I could see Sirit Byar, looking a bit smaller than usual himself, and white as his own hair in that rainy light. Jailly Doura was still holding me, but not rocking anymore, and sometime in the night she’d stopped making that terrible silent sound. If I turned my head very slowly and carefully, I could see most of one side of her face—a thin, lined, worn face it was, but the nose was strong and the mouth wasn’t a dead slash at all, but full and tender. Her hair was a forsaken birds’ nest, thick with mess—well, about like mine, as you can see. Her eyes were closed.

  Sirit Byar stood up. His voice was a rag of itself, but he spoke out loudly, not to Jailly Doura this time, nor to me, but to someone. I couldn’t tell where he was looking, what he was seeing. He said, “This is my last song. Take it. I make this bargain of my own will. I, Sirit Byar.” He stood silent for a moment, and then he nodded once, slowly, as though he’d had his reply. Oh, chicken-wrist, I can still see him.

  I’m not going to sing you the whole song, that last one. I could, but I’m not going to. This one dies with me, it’s supposed to. But this is the ending:

  Merchant, street girl, beggar, yeoman,

  king or common, man or woman,

  only two things make us human—

  sorrow and love, sorrow and love….

  Songs and fame are vain endeavor—

  only two things fail us never,

  only two things last forever—

  sorrow and love, sorrow and love….

  By the time he finished, it was light enough that I could see Aung Jatt standing in the courtyard entrance. Behind me Jailly Doura stirred and sighed, and as I turned my head she opened her eyes again. But they weren’t the same eyes. They were gray and wide and full of surprise, curiosity, whatever you want—they were a young woman’s eyes in a tired grown face. Maybe I had eyes like that when I was first traveling with Sirit Byar, but I doubt it. She said softly, just the way he’d said it to me, “There you are.” And Sirit Byar answered her, “Here I am.”

  Careful now, both of us, chicken-wrist, you and me. Jailly Doura looked down at me in her arms and said—said what? She said, “Are you my daughter, little one?”

  “No,” I said. “No, no, I’m not. I wish I were.” Then I was horribly afraid that I might have lost her again, saying that, driven her right back to where she’d been, but she only smiled and touched my lips and whispered, “Ah, I know. I was just hoping for a moment, one last, last time. Never mind. You have a sweet face.”

  I do not have a sweet face. There are ugly people who have sweet faces, much good may it do them in this world. I have the face I want, a dirty, mean wild animal’s face that makes people leave me alone. Fine. Fine, I wouldn’t have it different. But if ever I wanted in my life to have sweetness that somebody could see, it would have been then. I stood up, cramped and cranky, and helped Jailly Doura to rise.

  She was small, really, a tiny gray barefoot person in a mucky ruin of a gown that must have cost someone a few gold lotis a long time ago, and that a beggar wouldn’t have wiped his nose on now. She was as shaky on her feet as a newborn marsh-goat, but she wasn’t mad. I looked over toward Aung Jatt, trying to beckon him over to her, but he was staring at Sirit Byar, who had stumbled down to one knee. Jailly Doura was by him before I was. She knelt before him and took his face between her hands. “Not so soon,” she said. I remember that. She said, “Not so soon, I’ll not have it. I will not, my dear, no. Do you hear me, Sirit Byar?”

  You see, she knew better than I what he’d done. He had given up his last song to the gods, the Other Folk, whatever you people call them. And a bard’s last song has power, a last song is always answered, as this one was—but what becomes of the bard when the song is over? Sirit Byar’s face was a shrunken white mask, but his eyes were open and steady. He said, “Forgive me, Jailly Doura.”

  “Not if you leave us,” she answered him. “Not if you dare leave now.” But there was no anger in her voice, and no hope either. Sirit Byar made that half-grunt, half-snort sound that he always made when people were being a little too much for him. He said, “Well, forgive me or no, you are well, and I’ve done what was for me to do. Now I’m weary.”

  I wanted to touch him. I wanted to hold him the way Jailly Doura had held me all night, but I just stood with my fingers in my mouth, like a scared baby. Sirit Byar smiled his almost-smile at me and whispered, “I’m sorry the kiit broke, big girl. I wanted you to have it. Good-bye.” And he was gone, so. Aung Jatt closed his eyes himself, and began to weep. I remember. Jailly Doura didn’t, and I didn’t, but old Aung Jatt cried and cried.

  I buried him myself, and the shards of the kiit with him, under the threshold of the house, as I’d done with my father. The others wanted to help me, but I wouldn’t let them. When I was finished, I scratched a picture of Azdak, god of wanderers, on the stone stair, and I walked away. So now you know where Sirit Byar lies.

  There’s no more worth the telling. Aung Jatt and Jailly Doura wanted me to stay with them as long as I liked, forever, but I only passed a few days at the house with them. What I mostly remember is washing and washing Jailly Doura’s long gray-black hair in her bath, as the Queen’s ladies used to do with me, four of them at a time to hold me in the tub. I always hated it, and I’ve not put up with it since, but it’s different when you’re doing it for someone else. You don’t wash years of lunatic despair away in three days, but by the time I left, Jailly Doura could anyway peep in a mirror and start to recognize the handsome, dignified mistress of a great house, with servants underfoot like dai-beetles and a husband who looked at her like sunrise. I don’t begrudge it—whatever was hers she’d paid double-dear price for it, and double again. But I’d have liked Sirit Byar to see her this way, even once.

  When I left, she walked with me down to the two great stones where we’d first met Aung Ja
tt, a hundred years ago. She didn’t bother with saying, “Come back and visit us,” and I didn’t bother promising. Instead she took both my hands and swung them, the way children do, and she just said, “I would have been proud if you had been my daughter.”

  I didn’t know how to answer. I kissed her hands, which I’ve never done with anybody except the Queen, and you have to do that. Then I swung Sirit Byar’s old sea-bag to my shoulder, and I started off alone. I didn’t look back, but Jailly Doura called after me, “So would he have been proud. Remember, Mircha Del.”

  And I have remembered, and that’s why the fit took me to have someone set it all down, the only true tale of Sirit Byar you’re ever likely to hear. No, I told you I don’t want it; what good’s your scribble to me? I can’t read it—and besides, I was there. Keep it for yourself, keep it for anyone who wants to know a little of what he was. Bad enough they mess up his songs, let them get something the right way round, anyway. Farewell, my chicken-wrist—here’s your twelve coppers, and another for the sweet way you blush. There’s an ore barge tied up at Grebak, waiting for a good woman to handle the sweep, if I’m there by tomorrow eve.

  THE MAGICIAN OF KARAKOSK

  What, what—is it my turn? No, I was not asleep—I would never be so unmannerly as to doze off when someone else was telling a story. I was thinking only, thinking about how long it has been since I sat like this with friends—oh, with anyone, really—listening to wonders and sillinesses and wonders again by firelight. I have lived an odd sort of life, and I am afraid that it has left me with little to tell that would not bore the young ones here and antagonize the old; and I would not do either tonight for worlds. You must indulge me—I promise to keep the tale short, and leave plenty of evening for Gri and Chashi and Mistress Kydra here. I am as eager as anyone else to be done with my rambling mumbles.