Hour of the Octopus

by Joel Rosenberg

My guide exchanged a few whispers with the servitor on duty on the second floor of the donjon, and they both led me down the long hall, past pastel paintings of spotted fawns frolicking in a cool green bower. A whole herd of the long-legged young deer, their soft pelts a warm and friendly brown, capered all the way down the wall, some with two hooves high in the air, some hunkering down, ready to spring into a sprint, others already chasing each other in an endless game of flee-and-touch, the whole effect occasionally broken by the knob of an invisible door. Everything, from the blue of the painted sky to the cool minty green of the grasses, seemed to glow from a gentle inner light.

  It was all bright and cheery enough to ruin even a perfect day.

  The servitor stopped in front of a doorknob that was the only sign of a door’s presence, then knocked four times against the white tail of a prancing baby deer. I heard no answer, but she pulled on the knob, and the ragged edge of invisible door swung open. I admired the workmanship as I walked by, the way that the door had been cut around the outline of the fawn and the trunk of a drawing of a tree.

  She guided me down a short hall to what looked like a workshop: light splashed through the open windows onto a bank of rough-hewn tables. There were longbows in various stages of assembly and disassembly, and a fletching stand holding a single long arrow, plus various and sundry other implements, including an object that looked more like a thread-spinner than anything else.

  Over an alcohol flame, a potbellied clear glass flask boiled merrily.

  Penkil Ner Condigan was leaning back against a work-table, his thin arms crossed in front of his chest, his slim head tilted ever so slightly to one side. He was a tall man, almost skeletal in his slimness, but while no loose flesh hung beneath his chin, his face seemed to be that of another, a fat man; all the angles were smoothed out by fat.

  His shirt bloused above well-scratched black leather trousers, the scabbard of a wide-bladed knife angled on the front of his belt.

  “So, Kami Dan’Shir,” he said. “You’ve come to pay a courtesy call on me.” Penkil Ner Condigan’s deep bass voice trembled as he spoke. I didn’t understand his anger; even if I wasn’t of his profession, I was now a bourgeois, instead of an acrobat and peasant. He wouldn’t have to stoop class to spend time with me.

  I nodded. “True enough, Penkil Ner Condigan.” I shrugged. “No offense is intended.” I spread my hands. “Nobody seems to know exactly where a dan’shir fits in. Myself included.”

  He visibly struggled for control, and got it. A wan smile spread partway across his lined face. “Very well.”

  I wasn’t going to mention JenNa—that was likely to be a sore point—but courtesy did require that I say something about his family. “I hope that LonDee is well.”

  He shrugged. “As well as usual. My wife works as assistant to the chief cook in the kitchens below, and likes it enough.”

  There was a bone carving on the wall next to him, a pale white representation of a pig’s face, its mouth held open by a red apple. He pulled the apple from the mouth, listened for a moment, and spoke loudly into the pig: “A tray of sweetmeats to Penkil Ner Condigan’s workshop, if you please.” He squeezed the apple back into the pig’s mouth without waiting for a reply.

  I guess I looked surprised. “A speaking tube,” he said. “It terminates at the servitor’s station on the first floor, below.”

  He picked up a set of silver tongs. ‘Tea, first, Kami Dan’Shir; then I will show you around.“

  Make a square in the dirt, and bisect it from top to bottom with a line that stretches out a short way above and below it: the symbol for hare. If you preface it with the semicircle symbol for time, it means the hour of the hare. If, instead, you thicken the lines, then blow it up to immense proportions as you lay it out on the ground, you have the basic floorplan for the donjon of Glen Derenai. Just lay three others on top of the first one, and you’re fine.

  There are some irregularities, and more than a few additions: rooms on the first floor that are of double-height, fully open to the second; the turrets at each of the outer corners, the highest one at the southeast corner, holding the wizard’s workshop; the bulge in the northern part of the central section that is the Great Hall; two covered servants’ ways, seemingly resting on thin air, that bridge the center sections near the middle.

  But save the irregularities for later, and grasp the form first. The form left plenty of room for the gardens that bring the keep its fame. The trees, hedges, and flowers of the courtyards were under the direction of the chief gardener, although neither he nor his men were in evidence. Gardeners try to stay invisible.

  The livestock in the courtyards were under the care and control of Penkil Ner Condigan.

  Pheasants, their tails spread in pride or disdain or whatever birdy reason pheasants have for spreading their tails, walked the inner courtyards among tall trees and carefully manicured hedges. Tiny meer-squirrels gibbered and capered in the trees overhead, occasionally pausing in their endless mindless dance to turn wide eyes at the humans below before scurrying off. In a half-dozen tiny ponds, rainbow-skinned fingerlings broke the surface to suck down unwary insects.

  The main path led to the right; we took it, but Penkil Ner Condigan held out a hand.

  “Let’s try another route,” he said, as we reached a break in the high hedges.

  Ignoring his frown, I glanced around the corner. At a marble bench under a spreading chestnut tree, a lord and a lady were engaged in a quiet but heated conversation.

  I didn’t recognize either of them, although I would have liked to have gotten to know the lady better, despite getting only a glance: her robes were pulled tightly at slim waist and nicely rounded hips; her hair, long, black, and glossy, fell almost to her waist. Lovely.

  He was a not unhandsome man, with what I would have thought were the shoulders of an acrobat if the sword at his waist hadn’t proclaimed him a warrior just as much as his arrogant stance did. He reached out a hand toward her, not stopping when she tried to turn away.

  Penkil Ner Condigan pulled me back. “There are some things best not seen,” he whispered.

  “Very well,” I whispered back. “But who are they?”

  He shrugged as we continued down the path. “The lady is Lady ViKay; the lord is Esterling, an old friend.”

  An old friend, indeed. The way he had casually put his hands on her suggested something a bit more intimate than old friends. Or maybe I was just overexercising the right of the dan’shir to draw conclusions.

  Penkil Ner Condigan and I stepped to the side of the narrow path at the approach of a pair of nobles, the lord a narrow-faced man in afternoon white with gold trimming along the seams of his tunic, the lady in a matching gown of some light, gauzy material gathered tightly at left shoulder and hip, slit up the right side to midthigh. I have seen worse thighs. Her face was pale and delicate, her mouth pink and full, framed by dark brown hair glossy as fine wood.

  “Lord Drack; Lady RuAn,” he said, with a bow that I hope I echoed rather than mimicked.

  “Lovely day, Penkil Ner Condigan,” the man said, accepting the bows with a mild, supercilious nod. Under a shock of thinning gray hair, his skin seemed taut, as though pulled too tightly.

  Lady RuAn opened her mouth as though to say something, then closed it.

  “No, no, dear, I see no objection to an introduction,” he said. “Your companion is…?”

  “Kami Dan’Shir,” I said, bowing again. “I am Lord Toshtai’s… puzzle solver.”

  “Here for the wedding to solve puzzles?” Lady RuAn’s eyes rested on mine for a long moment. I’d never seen quite that deep a shade of blue before.

  I nodded. “I am here to entertain, should the occasion arise. At Lord Minch’s request,” I said. At Lord Minch’s request, as carefully manipulated by Lord Toshtai, I didn’t add. I am, after all, a discoverer of truths, not an obligatory revealer of truths.

  “Fascinating,” Drack said unconvincingly, dismissing us with a nod as he again offe
red his arm to Lady RuAn and the two of them walked on.

  I watched them for a moment, enjoying the sway of her hips under the tight gown. Officially, of course, noble ladies are unapproachable by the likes of acrobats and dan’shirs, but my own experience is that unofficial approaches are just as pleasant.

  I thought that I’d just given them a glance, but Penkil Ner Condigan was glaring at me. I gave him a blank look and we continued down the twisting path across the courtyard.

  A tiny brown rabbit scurried out from underneath one bush, hopped frantically down the path a few steps, then ducked into another invisible hole in a hedge. I would have wondered what the rush was if a ridgecat, its long ears flattened back against its wide head, hadn’t immediately followed. Its claws clicked a rapid tattoo against the stone of the path as it turned, then disappeared around the bend. I could have sworn the ridgecat was wearing a thick leather collar, and wondered how much healing attention whoever had collared the ridgecat had required.

  Penkil Ner Condigan shook his head. “I think we need a new ridgecat; I’ll have to have words with the keeper.”

  “Eh?”

  “Lord Orazhi likes to have rabbits in his gardens, granted, as well as other animals, but there must always be a balance, eh? And not just for the benefit of the gardener who is always tired of having to plant seven bulbs for each one uneaten.” He bent in front of the place where both the rabbit and the cat had emerged. “Lady ViKay’s private garden is on the other side,” he said, “or I’d have one of the huntsmen do it. Where the family is directly concerned, I like to do things myself.” He dropped his leather bag to one side, then dropped to one knee in front of the hole. “Care to lend a hand?”

  “I guess that depends on what we’re doing,” I said as he took out a few turns of thin, exquisitely braided leather rope and set it down beside him.

  He had stopped frowning for a moment, but he started it up again. “Ah. I forgot for a moment. Never mind,” he said. “I’m just fastening a noose. You wouldn’t know anything about that.”

  “That would depend.” I squatted and picked up the rope. It took me almost no time to make a loop and choke-knot, then to hang the loop from the bush so that its bottom bend didn’t quite touch the ground. I left a few turns of rope lying on the ground next to the hole, then held out my hand. “Stake, please.”

  In the wild, a stake is a piece of gathered deadwood, possibly with a point whittled carefully enough to look unwhittled. Penkil Ner Condigan’s was an ornately engraved brass staple with long legs and a wide crown. One turn of the rope around the crown and a quick push of the sharp points into the soft green grass, and it fastened the rope to the ground tightly enough to hold a struggling rabbit.

  “Odds are small,” I said, “that it’ll break its neck when the noose pulls it off its feet. If not, I wouldn’t want to bet that that fancy rope of yours will choke it. Slides too easily on itself,” I said.

  He pursed his lips. “You would suggest?”

  “Simple twine, Penkil Ner Condigan,” I said.

  “Oh.”

  ‘The tendency of the bourgeois is to prefer the complex over the elegant.“

  His eyes twinkled. “I take it you’ve done this before.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t imagine how you would think that, Penkil Ner Condigan,” I said.

  He looked for a moment as though he actually was going to smile, but instead beckoned me on. “You wouldn’t mind helping me fasten a few of those around the gardens?”

  I spread my hands. “Just a part of the traditional courtesy call between a huntsman and a dan’shir, no?”

  Then he did smile.

  Unblinking, three hairy owls watched me from their cages near the window.

  The beer tasted of vinegar and rodent; I coughed once, twice, three times. I wasn’t used to it, or to the way that my head was swimming.

  “… stupid.”

  “Dumb.”

  “Moronic.”

  “Clodwitted.”

  “Dull.”

  “Listless.”

  “Slow.”

  “Overdue.”

  “Ooo.” Tebol shook his head. “I can’t think of one that begins with an oo. Your point, Narantir.”

  The fat magician smiled. I drank some more and coughed some more. Narantir slapped me on the back, harder than strictly necessary, stopping only when Tebol raised a slim finger.

  “The beer in Den Oroshtai is weak, and breeds weak tastes,” Tebol said. “Unfortunate.”

  ‘Tragic,“ Narantir suggested.

  “Catastrophic,” Tebol said.

  Narantir nodded. “Mmm… cataclysmic.”

  “Enh.” Tebol sipped his beer and thought about it for a moment. “Calamitous.”

  “Fine. Sad,” Narantir said.

  “Well… let it be.” Tebol raised an eyebrow. “Disastrous.”

  “Err… sorrowful?”

  “ ‘Sorrowful’?” Tebol shook his head. “I let ‘sad’ go by, but that’s a bit much.”

  “Perhaps.” Narantir reached out his unwashed hands and took another deep-fried tentacle from the bowl on the table. “You have a play?”

  Tebol smiled. “Somber?”

  Narantir didn’t return the smile. “Ah: I should have challenged. Your point.” He offered me the bowl, but I declined. I’m not overfastidious, I would hope, but I had the feeling that Narantir hadn’t washed his hands or brushed under his nails since the Tenancy. Wizards are like that, most of them.

  Tebol was an exception. His gray robes were tailored to his modest frame, belted tightly about his waist and neatly hemmed at the calves; his hair had been freshly trimmed, each hair to the same length, so that it seemed layered all around his head. His nails were square-cut, and his hands scrubbed pink, as though cleanliness mattered to him. Although you never know with wizards. Despite the apparent fastidiousness, it didn’t seem to bother him to be eating out of the same bowl as Narantir.

  ‘The tentacles are palatable,“ said Narantir.

  “Luscious?”

  “Certainly. Scrumptious.”

  “Savory.”

  “I’ll challenge.”

  “Hmmm… your point.”

  I took my mug of beer and went to the window.

  Everything is different; everything is the same. In both Den Oroshtai and Glen Derenai—and everywhere else— the wizard’s workshop was kept well away from other things. Nobody likes to be around a working wizard. Forget any danger; the smell is enough to drive you away.

  While Narantir’s had been tucked away in the dungeon, Tebol’s workshop was pushed up and away: the Glen Derenai wizard lived and worked in the turret built into the outer wall.

  Below, guards in the livery of Lord Orazhi walked the inner parapets, each foursome of local guards accompanied by a mixed foursome, one each from a visiting lord.

  All is illusion, all is deception; Lord Orazhi had made sure that his own guards were walking the parapets on the outer curtain walls, and inside the courtyard, even at this late hour, a hundred of them pretended to take their ease, a small choir harmonizing on a gentle lullaby. The mother of the lord of Glen Derenai in fact did give birth to an idiot son, but she drowned him in a washbasin, and it was his brother Orazhi who ruled Glen Derenai; proper security would be maintained.

  Further below, in the main gardens off the Great Hall, a reception was in progress.

  Custom undoubtedly prescribed who was giving it, and for whom; all I knew was that clusters of members of our beloved ruling class were engaged in conversation and dance beneath smoking, flickering torches. Only traces of music filtered up this high: the distant tinkling of chimes, a flare of silverhorn or thump of a drum.

  Tebol was at my shoulder. “You’re silent for one paying a courtesy call, Kami Dan’Shir,” he said.

  “Way of the Dan’Shir, Tebol ha-Mahrir,” I said.

  His smile was neither friendly nor hostile. “And what is the Way of the Dan’Shir, Eldest Son Discoverer-of-Truths?”r />
  I pursed my lips. “I’m trying to decide that, Rainy Sunrise User of Magic,” I said, formal as he was. “It’s not easy.”

  “Many things are not easy.” He drained his mug with one huge swallow, then gestured that I should do the same. “Drinking enough to be ready for the tour is one.”

  “I don’t understand why we have to drink so much,” I said.

  Narantir looked at me as though I was stupid. “Because it’s part of the spell,” he said.

  Oh.

  Tebol laughed drunkenly. “Because if we were sober, we wouldn’t want to do this. Because if they were sober, the owls wouldn’t let us.”

  “If we’re really going to do it.”

  “Indeterminate, as well as pathetic,” Tebol said. “One never knows. Drink.”

  “Consume.”

  “Mrrnn… your point.”

  Acrobats don’t tend to drink much, and I’d never cared for beer. But I was noticing that the taste improved, or at least got less offensive, with every mug. By the time I had another six or so mugs, it would probably taste good.

  “What do you mean, indeterminate?”

  “Tentative, unsure, ambiguous, doubtful, uncertain, problematical, undetermined, equivocal, unclear,” Tebol said.

  I decided I liked Tebol, but also that I’d like him better if it was politic to hit him with a stick a few times. “I am no wiser.”

  “The spell depends on indeterminacy. Which is why we lock the door.”

  “And what happens if the door opens while…” I waved my hands, vaguely, which was only fair, given that I was vague about what we were going to do. “… whatever is going on is going on? Is that indeterminate, too?”

  Tebol shrugged. “Well, yes and no. Whoever stands in the door would be able to tell if our bodies are still here, which would make it determinate, yes?”

  “Well, yes.”

  ‘There are some things man is not meant to know.“ He smiled. ”There are three solutions. If our bodies are here, then we cannot be elsewhere; the spell would fail, and we would wake up. If our bodies are not here, then we must be elsewhere; the spell would fail, and we would be lost in the ether.“