by Byron Preiss
Before they reached it, however, one of them turned suddenly, looking toward the back of the house. The Elder, engaged in freeing another statue, also looked. Framed in the rear door stood the old man. He held a weapon strange to most of them; the Elder recognized it as a crossbow.
“Put it down,” the old man said to the two with the statue. They did so—the base cracked a flagstone.
“For twenty years I worked to build this house and garden,” the old man said. His voice was high and cracked, his forehead shiny with sweat. “In my travels to the Far Westland, I have searched out the best artists, and paid dearly to have these sculptures brought back here. You—you would destroy them because they cannot plow a field or pull a cart? You would send them to the smithy to be melted down and reformed as weapons? Never! You don’t understand—these sculptures are priceless! They were made not to serve a function, but simply to be! Now, go, before I kill you all!”
While the old man was talking, the Elder noticed that the crossbow’s line was not cocked. The sight of the mistake caused a surprising sadness in him. He turned to the giant and said, “Keep him inside his house until we are finished here.”
The giant nodded, turned, and crossed the garden. For all his weight, he moved lightly and quickly on his feet.
“I warn you!” the old man shouted, hysteria thinning his voice. “Keep back! Leave those statues alone or I’ll use this!”
The Elder shook his head. “You would not use it,” he said, “even if you knew how.” He motioned for the others to resume working.
The giant stood before the old man, who stared at the wooden buttons on the giant’s too-small shirt. He breathed a harsh, ragged sob and lowered the weapon. The giant took him by the shoulders, turned him about gently, and pushed him into the house.
The walls of the back room were decorated with Southland feather paintings. The old man sank into a chair, and the giant sat down across the room. He stared at the old man in curiosity. He could not understand why the old man was upset. If he could speak, he would ask—but he could not. Of course, there were many things he did not understand, and he did not consider himself any worse off because of it. The world, by virtue of its very mystery, was a bright and fascinating place to him, and he was always keen to learn more about it, even if he did not understand it. He did not understand now why the old man sat hugging his bony knees, racked by sorrow. The giant looked through a window. They had removed five of the statues now. The squares of raw black dirt where their bases had been contrasted with the green hills. He looked at the remaining sculptures. He had never in his life seen such things before. They were so real, some of them, so detailed—like living things that had been frozen in metal. Why had the people responsible—his mind struggled for the word, remembered it, artists—why had the artists gone to such trouble?
Behind him, the old man watched. “You needn’t worry—I’m quite sure they will take them all. Those statues represented the search of a lifetime, you know. Not that you care. Not that you could possibly comprehend the crime that’s being committed. To destroy art for the sake of war—there can be no greater crime.”
The giant stared at the statues being set by the gate, one by one. He watched them being lifted from their places in the garden, and as each one left its hill, he felt a stab of pain deep within him. He did not know why. The garden looked so empty without the statues in their proper places. He turned suddenly away from the window and stared down at the old man. He did not want to see what was happening out there anymore, and he did not want to hear the old man’s accusations either. They caused pain within him. He made an inarticulate sound, a growl of pain and incomprehension that caused the old man to stare at him. The giant was looking at him, staring at him, with a mixture of pity and struggling understanding.
“Do you understand?” the old man asked in a whisper. “It would almost be worth it, if you did. It would not replace these beautiful works of art, nor the love they reveal, but it would be of some solace to know that their destruction inspired in you an appreciation of their worth. . . . ”
The giant pulled the old man gently to his feet and toward the window. “No,” the old man protested, struggling feebly. “No, I cannot look at them, do you not understand? It is too painful. It is too much to see the love in them deformed. Looking hurts too much.”
The giant scowled and shook the old man gently, as a father might shake a recalcitrant child. He nodded again at the scene beyond the window, to each of the statues in turn. Then he held his hand before the old man’s face and held up one finger.
Comprehension began to dawn in the old man. “You want me to . . . to pick one of them?” he asked in astonishment. The giant nodded. The old man looked through the window again. It was a very difficult choice. All of them held so many memories for him. The sculpture they were so callously uprooting even now, for example—that one he had been given in repayment for saving the artist’s life in a tavern brawl in Dagemon-Ken, decades ago. Or others, leaning as though in loneliness now, that he had bought or bartered for simply because their beauty had haunted his nights. Decide between them? How could he? It was like being asked to choose between a son and a daughter. He could not.
Yet he had to save a work of art if he could. He let his gaze run lovingly over all of them, one last time, inspecting each of them. When he had finished, he made his choice. With tears in his eyes, he pointed toward one of the smallest of the lot—the image of a woman being born of a flower. “That one,” he said. It had been a gift to him by an artist now dead, a woman he had known and loved for a time in Bundura. This part of her, at least, would live on.
The giant looked at the small sculpture in surprise—it seemed to him almost unnoticeable, compared to the others. But he had already decided that there had to be more to this than he was yet aware of, and so he nodded. He walked out into the garden and started toward the others, one of whom—the uniformed man—had approached the sculpture in order to remove it.
He looked up when the giant’s shadow fell across him. The giant laid one huge hand on the statue, and with the other waved him away.
“Here, what’s the matter with you?” the uniformed man said truculently. The giant ignored him. He lifted the statue with one hand, and the other quieted abruptly. The giant turned toward the house, carrying the statue.
“Where are you going?” The quiet voice of the Elder reached him. The giant hesitated, then turned to face the Elder. Still holding the statue with one hand, he nodded determinedly toward the house, where the old man stood framed in the window.
The Elder looked at the old man, then at the giant. After a long moment he slowly nodded. The giant returned to the house and watched as the old man saw the sculptures being taken away. Then the old man turned from the window and saw the sculptured woman in the flower, so odd and out of place in the giant’s hand. Its dirt-caked base rested on a handwoven rug.
The old man looked up at the giant. There did not seem to be any change in his expression. It was passive, open, but quiet. The old man studied it as he would a sculpture, and the giant watched him nervously, as if he did not know what to do.
He is waiting, thought the old man. Does he know? Does he know how I feel? Or does he pity me?
The old man took the giant’s hand and gently put it in his own. Then he took the giant’s fingers and ran them lightly up and down the sculpture of the woman’s back. “I knew her, once,” said the old man. “She did not look this way, but when I touch this, I feel her.”
The giant stared at him, a glimmer of understanding in his eyes. The old man started to embrace him, to thank him for what he had done, but the giant pulled away and rushed toward the door.
The old man watched from the window as the younger man ran across the lawn. Then, to a Bunduran woman he had not seen in years, the old man whispered, “My lady, I saw a tear.”
* * *
As the general excitement and fever of the impending war spread over Fandora, people reacted to
it in different ways. Oil was poured into doorlocks and latches, and tumblers creaked protestingly as bolts were closed for the first time in years. With the coming of night, the fear of a Simbalese invasion was a palpable thing—it stalked the streets of many towns like the billowing black sails of a dark windship. Children slept in their parents’ arms, and adults took turns standing watch at the towns’ outskirts.
Lagow, recently returned to Jelrich Town, viewed this grimly as yet another problem caused by Jondalrun’s plan for war. He grudgingly admitted, however, that it did make his task of recruiting his quota of soldiers easier. The men practically queued up in their eagerness to defeat the dread enemy and protect their families.
“It is easier,” Lagow told his wife, “that they’re so eager to join this foolish crusade. For the soul of me, I cannot bring myself to order them to march in Jondalrun’s army.”
“It was the will of the High Council,” his wife said, “however foolish it may seem. The responsibility’s not yours any longer, Lagow. No one can fault you for doing what you’re supposed to do.”
“I wonder,” he answered. “Can a bad be made good by a lot of old men so decreeing?” Deena sighed. “I’m afraid you already know the answer to that, my husband,” and she turned over in their bed to face another sleepless night.
* * *
In Borgen Town there was much opposition to the war. It was a relatively wealthy town, and many of its inhabitants had no desire to chance losing what they had earned by years of hard work. Much concern was also voiced about how the women and children would fare should the men of the village not come back.
Tenniel listened to these arguments, and he could not help admitting that they were fair and just points of view. So the enlistment quota for Borgen Town did not rise rapidly. Tenniel discussed the problem with Talend and Axel, his fellow Elders.
“We must make them understand,” Talend said when he learned of the problem. “If Fandora does not protect itself now, the sorcerers will commit further and more serious invasions of our land!”
In his youth, he had hunted the wild boars and buffalo of the highlands, and he knew that, if an arrow only wounded without incapacitating, the hunter was lucky indeed to escape the animal’s retribution. Talend had not been so fortunate, as his crippled leg showed. Fandora had to react like a wounded animal to Simbala, Talend reasoned, and to do this, they needed men. He called a meeting in the town square and spoke at length to the people.
As a result, many more villagers were shamed and frightened into volunteering. Tenniel was impressed, and also downcast; he considered the recruiting of the men his primary responsibility, and his youthfulness and inexperience in the matter had made it necessary for Talend to take over. But the quota was still lacking. In desperation, Tenniel conceived of posting notices that any brigand, high-wayman, or runaway farmhand being pursued by Waymen could find asylum in the army, and over the next few days several men with ragged clothes and a generally unwholesome attitude added themselves to the roster.
Talend disapproved of this method, but Tenniel argued that they had no choice—the quota had to be met; and it was. The next step was to transfer the contingent to Tamberly Town, where the entire army was gathering.
That, Tenniel told himself, would be easy. He had already passed through the most difficult part. He was in for a disheartening surprise.
* * *
The Elder of Cape Bage had a sense of the dramatic, and so he announced the decision of the High Council in a dramatic fashion. Upon returning to town, he headed straight for the bell tower at the Court of Fools.
It was midnight. The sound of the bells rang forebodingly through the streets of Cape Bage. Dreamers and drunkards alike stumbled from the inns to discover Tamark, atop the tower, shouting at the top of his lungs. “Volunteers!” he cried. “An army forms in Fandora! We need volunteers to defend our homeland!”
Those unable to comprehend his words returned to their tankards, but the majority of Cape Bage remained in the streets, wondering if the fisherman had lost his mind. Most of them had heard talk of the attack on Gordain Town, some had even seen the windships off the Simbalese shore, but few believed that Fandora would dare venture across the sea to do battle with the sorcerers in the east.
Among those who watched with alarm was Dayon, a young navigator freshly returned from a perilous journey through the strait. He waited at the foot of the tower, hoping to catch Tamark on his way outside.
Minutes later, as Tamark rushed from a small wooden door in the side of the tower, Dayon caught hold of his shoulder. Tamark looked angry, started to pull away, then recognized the young man’s face. “Dayon!” He smiled. “You’re safe.” He reached out to embrace him.
Dayon was embarrassed by the Elder’s show of affection. He had not realized that Tamark cared this much about him. “Yes, sir,” he said stiffly. “I was swept out into the worst part of the currents. My boat was finally cast up upon an islet, and it took me days to repair it.” He shuddered. “A terrifying experience. Now I hear you say there are more problems to come. What is this talk of war?”
Tamark frowned. “Not just talk, I’m afraid. The damn fools in Tamberly Town are driving Fandora to war.”
“Tamberly, sir? That’s my hometown!”
“Then you must know of Elder Jondalrun. The hottempered fool has the High Council on his side.”
Dayon smiled. “Jondalrun is my father.”
Tamark’s face slackened and his throat went suddenly dry. “Your father?”
Dayon nodded. “By your description, it is definitely my father.”
Tamark averted his eyes from the young man’s face. “I have bad news,” he whispered. “I must speak to you alone.” The two men broke through the growing crowd and returned to Tamark’s room behind the bake shop.
There was the sound of weeping, and the door to Tamark’s room opened once again. Dayon ran across the cobblestones to a small building on the other side of the street. In his room, he quickly packed clothing and food for a day’s journey. As some fishermen watched from the edge of the Court of Fools, he ran down the dark road toward Tamberly Town.
XII
On the western coast of Simbala, north of the gentle beaches, the land folded upward into cliffs. Though by no means as sheer as those of Fandora, still they were impressive, made more so by the many strange shapes and colors that the weathering years had brought to them.
On one high promontory overlooking the strait, a massive formation stood, lonely and aloof against the stars. The wind and rain had sculptured it into a shape similar to the skull of some gigantic beast—a dragon, according to popular legend. It was called Dragonhead. From the top, an unobstructed view of the Strait of Balomar could be found.
A dark horse and rider emerged from the curtain of fog that surrounded the bare rock and precipice. They came to a stop beside the skull-shaped formation, and the rider dismounted. It was Hawkwind; he wore a heavy robe, with a sword scabbarded at his belt. The hawk sat upon his caped shoulder. A moment later, three other riders joined him, the iron hooves of the horses striking sparks from the rock. The second rider, a small slight figure, tossed back her hood to reveal the beautiful features of Ceria. Hawkwind stepped to the edge of the precipice and observed the misty sea. The hawk launched through the mist with a cry, circling in the cold, wet air, voicing its harsh cry. The bird was upset, and Ceria wondered what caused it. She had noticed before that the moods of Hawkwind and the hawk seemed eerily the same at times. Hawkwind seemed distant now, as though an unseen wall separated him from others, including her. To her frustration, Ceria could fathom this change no better than she could the disposition of the hawk.
The two other riders were palace guards. The older of them, Lathan by name, now approached Hawkwind on foot, bringing a torch. Hawkwind turned away from the cliff’s edge and extended a hand to Ceria. The hawk continued to circle above them, keening, as the two of them walked toward Dragonhead.
“Is there a reason
why you have brought a sword?” Ceria asked Hawkwind softly. “Do you expect something, my love?”
“As of the past twenty-four hours, I expect many things,” he replied.
The answer did not satisfy Ceria, but she kept close to Hawkwind as they reached the edge of the rock. In front of them was a jagged, irregular crack, black as a mine shaft. Hawkwind raised his torch, and it illuminated the damp granite walls as they entered.
“I don’t know what killed the Northweald child,” he said, “but from what the Northwealdsman has told us, it sounds as if the girl had been crushed and mangled—almost as though she had been hurled from the cliffs or beaten with clubs. It does not sound as though it could be the actions of a forest animal.”
They edged around a corner, to be confronted by a fork in the passageway—the right way led steeply up, the left just as steeply down. Hawkwind took the left-hand passage.
“Yet,” said Ceria, “you agree with me. The Fandorans could not have been responsible.”
Hawkwind smiled. “Ephrion has told me often enough that a monarch should have all possibilities investigated, and, whenever possible, investigate them himself. I wanted Kiorte to order a windship out to survey the Fandoran coast, but he says that the winds that blow currently in the strait are too violent to allow it. We must see what we can see ourselves.” His torch, held overhead, illuminated a shallow pool of water on the level floor they had reached. “Legacy of the rains,” Hawkwind said. “It will be cold—shall I carry you?”
“Please,” Ceria said warmly, “as long as you keep in mind what happened at the brook.”
She was referring to an incident of well over a year ago, when they had spent a day by themselves in a secluded part of the southern woods. Having gallantly offered to carry her across a small brook, Hawkwind had slipped, and they had both been soaked in the icy water. Both had laughed about it then, but this time the memory elicited only a faint smile from Hawkwind. As he lifted her in his arms, Ceria felt a definite pang of rejection. He is distant, he is excluding me from this, she thought. I do not know why.
