The White Tree

by Edward W. Robertson

  * * *

  The next day gave him nothing. He read through the morning, leaving long enough to buy some bread and salted meat and ask the grocer where and what time they held the trials, then returned to his tomb and read and ate and slept. Like that the hours were gone.

  He woke that Saturday and it was some time before he remembered enough to be afraid. He didn't intend to do anything more than go down to the trial and see what turned out, but even that modest plan shook him like a boy shakes a lightning bug in a bottle. He ate a bite of bread, chewing long after it was soft enough to swallow, then put the rest away. He'd puke if he tried any more.

  For a while he walked among the tombstones, reading names, feelings his boots in the grass and the dirt between him and the bodies of the forgotten. The stones bore names and titles and families, lands and holdings and glories, cracks and crooked bases and vandalism. A bent-backed figure trudged slowly through the flat part of the yard a couple hundred feet from the hill. Dante crouched behind a tombstone and waited for the man to go away. He reminded himself he was just going to observe, to see if maybe they'd just give Blays the lash and then the two could be back on their way. He scooped up dirt and rubbed it on his cheeks and neck, mussed his black hair, combing it through his fingers to stretch it over his ears and down his forehead. Let them recognize him through that.

  The crowds weren't too bad. A few hundred people had found the time to loiter around the square to laugh and jeer the accused. Others formed a lopsided ring around a red belt of flagstones kept clear by a passel of watchmen in rich brown cloaks. The red stones were divided into twelve sections and looped around an inner circle of white stone. At its center a magistrate held court on a raised dais. Before him, attending his words with dirt-streaked faces, three men dressed in rags and chains awaited sentence. Dante's heart shuddered. Had he missed Blays' hearing? He threaded among the crowd, trading elbows and shoulders. The magistrate murmured something and the mob ruffled with laughter. Dante got about four people deep from the belt of red stones and found he could go no further. He stood on his toes, scanning the faces of the accused, and after several long moments he found Blays. The boy's cheeks looked puffy. A number of lumps and cuts stood redly on his nose and chin, but his eyes were hard and bright.

  The three men were dragged off for various beatings and imprisonments and the next man in line was brought to stand before the court and be accused of attacking a tailor. For the next two minutes the magistrate heard arguments of witness and defendant. The crowd cheered his sentence.

  "See you next Saturday!" some wag called as he was hauled off. The bailiff stepped up beside the magistrate and thinned his eyes at his parchment.

  "Next to stand before this court, Blays Buckler," he said. The people exchanged glances, laughing as the name circulated through the crowd. Dante clamped his jaw together as Blays waddled into the open circle, chains clanking.

  "Blays Buckler," the magistrate said, and bulged his lower lip with his tongue. He had a fine, delicate-boned face, and he stroked the saggy skin of his neck while he considered Blays. "The charges against you are of two murders in a public house. What say you of your guilt?"

  "Not," Blays said.

  "Very well. The witness?"

  A man stepped forward and Dante recognized the innkeep they'd seen in the common room of the Frog's Head. He was a fat man, the kind of man who spent more time in his own kitchen than fetching drinks.

  "That would be me, sir."

  "What did you see that night?" the magistrate said, leaning forward.

  "I saw the two boys come in," he said, looking around the craned faces of the crowd. "They looked like rough boys. I've seen too many like them to be fooled by youth."

  "To the point?"

  "Right. They went upstairs. After a bit we heard some crashing around like the end of the world and a bit after that they walk down cool as the nor'wind. I go upstairs and see the two slain. They had their guts hanging out like does."

  "Sickening."

  "Yes, sir. I'd never seen human intestines before. Were a sort of pinkish gray, with these funny blue bands around them. Ghastly."

  "Indeed," the magistrate said, pursing his lips. "As concerns your earlier statement, is that to say you didn't actually see the murders take place?"

  "Well I wasn't about to go upstairs," the innkeep said. "It sounded like people were being killed up there!"

  The crowd groused with laughter. The magistrate quirked his mouth, then beckoned Blays forward.

  "What do you have to say in your defense?"

  "They were tracking me and Dante for days," Blays said. His voice lost its waver as he went along. "They're cultists. They tried to kill us before we turned the tables on them."

  "So you admit killing them," the magistrate said, raising a gray brow. He met the eyes of the audience and they laughed.

  "It was them or us," Blays said, standing straight in his chains.

  "So you say. Can anyone corroborate your story?"

  "Co-what-o-wait?"

  The magistrate steepled his hands. "Were there any other witnesses?"

  "Well, Dante was there," he said. "If he was here he'd tell you the same thing."

  "Wouldn't he tell me anything to save his neck from rope burn?"

  Blays cocked his head. "Is your majesty calling me a liar?"

  The magistrate lifted his eyes to the overcast sky and waited for the nattering of the crowd to die down. He chuckled once they were reasonably silent, scratching his upper lip.

  "I'm no king," he said, "and I'd say your motivations cast some aspersions on your words."

  "What? Well, how do you know he's not lying?" Blays said, pointing at the innkeep.

  "Because he'd be hanged for it. He's run the Frog's Head for two decades, and his father before him. Do you have family here? Property?"

  "I'm a registered armsman of Bressel."

  "Your papers," the magistrate said. Blays said something Dante couldn't catch. The bailiff approached him and fumbled through the pockets of Blays' grimy doublet. From here and there the men of the crowd started hissing. The blank-faced bailiff removed a greenish crust of bread from Blays' shirt, then scowled and cast it away. In another pocket he found the papers and carried them to the magistrate. "You're not of the arms guild," he said after a moment's examination. "Perhaps you gave them some trouble."

  "They said I was too young!" Blays cried.

  "A likely story."

  "Look, you old crow, those guys were trying to kill us! What else were we supposed to do?"

  "Peace, peace," the magistrate said, raising his palms. "The court has other business today and you're not the first nor the last to hold himself above the law. That's all this matter is, isn't it? Your defense, so far as it can be believed, is the law of the wilds. The laws of man are derived from the gods of the Belt itself. We believe in justice on this earth and mercy in the heavens." He parted his lips and gazed up at the clouds. "You're to be executed one week hence."

  "Well eat shit!" Blays shouted. The bailiff punched him in the eye and he dropped out of sight. Dante shoved the man in front of him out of his way, bouncing up and down to get a glimpse of Blays before they wrangled him back to his cell, but the boy stumbled on his chains, pelted by hard bread and softer, less savory things, and was swallowed by the rabble. The next prisoner was brought forth and the mob forgot about Blays as the process began again.

  Dante turned and forced himself away from the white stone circle and its red band. He bumped someone and they responded with a fist to his ribs. Dante's hand clutched at his sword. The man's life was saved by Dante's dim understanding he would only have the chance for one big scene in this town and this wasn't the time for it. He walked on. He walked back to the tomb. He walked in a fugue of scarred faces and screeching voices that echoed from the city walls like the whole thing was shaking apart. Nothing but a show. A dance. An act for the men of Whetton to pat themselves on the back and feel great about having sent a trumped
-up monster to his grave. Their laws were as hollow as the black between the stars. He'd see them swing from their own nooses next Saturday.

  He felt grass beneath his feet and stopped to get his bearings. Rain was falling, pocking against his hood. Back in the churchyard. Back among the dead. The rest of the town could learn a thing from the way they laid there without screwing anything up. He closed his eyes, shook his head. His chest quaked as he sucked air.

  "See the show today?"

  Dante didn't turn. He cleared his mind, as best he could, and gathered up the shadows.

  "You were there, I'm sure."

  "Ah. Already I begin to see how you survived." The voice was nasal, accented with the clipped, burnished words of the kind of man who rode around in knee breeches. Dante faced him then, expecting a strong-chinned, empty-eyed lord, and meeting instead a skinny, dirty, two-steps-from-sackcloth graybeard with stringy hair and an air of patient amusement.

  "What do you want?

  "It isn't what I want. It's what you want, Dante."

  "Now that's downright profound," Dante said. He froze, tightening his grip on the nether. "How did you know my name?"

  "Lucky guess," the old man said. "My name's Cally."

  "Pretty nice beard for a Cally."

  "I think I've been hearing that joke for longer than I've been alive." Cally smiled at Dante, letting him stew. "It's short for something obnoxiously longer."

  "I'm sorry," he said, unsure why.

  "Don't be." The old man folded his hands behind his back and gazed up into the churchyard. A drop of rain hit him in the eye and he blinked. "Anyone would be angry after what they did to your friend."

  "It was like a punchline without a joke," Dante said. "It's not fair. He was telling the truth."

  "What are you going to do about it?"

  "Wait a week and find out."

  "I know your name," Cally said, looking on him with fever-bright blue eyes, a green corona around their pupils, "because I'm one of them."

  Dante jerked back and lashed out with all the nether he could hold. The old man should have ruptured like a sack of oats, spilled his guts like the devotee in the inn. Instead nothing, a slight pressure in Dante's ears. Cally pinched his upper lip, chuckling.

  "I didn't say I was trying to kill you."

  "Oh, I suppose you're just here for a friendly chat about the glory of Arawn."

  "That would be boring for us both," the old man said, beetling his brows. "I've got far more interesting things to teach you."

  "Like what?" Dante said. His hand drifted toward his sword.

  "Like how they wanted you to find the book."

  "Right. That explains why they've been trying to kill me to get it back ever since."

  "And sending a single neeling to fetch a copy of a priceless relic makes sense!" Cally whooped, slapping his knee with his shapeless black hat. "I always told them that would be transparent as a window pane, but it always works. It always works!"

  Dante rolled his eyes. "So logically, they wanted me to have it."

  "Well, they did and they didn't. It's a large organization. It isn't like a single body, where all organs work in harmony. There are many cross-purposes. Contradictions. Disagreements in methodology."

  "Are you expecting me to believe or understand any of this?"

  "Think about the gods for a moment," Cally said, then glanced behind him. He leaned in and touched Dante's elbow. "Walk with me. We shouldn't do this here. Good. Where was I: the gods. It always comes back to them, doesn't it? How is it they're able to make everything so clear?"

  "Perhaps it's the advantage of their heavenly perspective," Dante muttered. Cally chuckled at that, a noise surprisingly like heh-heh, and led Dante further into the churchyard. Once a few trees stood between them and the eyes of the city the old man stopped and mused a moment, listening to the patter of the rain on the leaves.

  "We speak of the houses of the Belt of the Celeset as if the gods were all one mind. Yet all the stories are about how they squabble and shift alliances whenever it's expedient. And who could blame them? Their brothers and sisters and fathers and daughters are all bitches or the sons thereof. In similar fashion, the admirers of Arawn are fractured in their methods. The underlings who don't know what's going on see a book's been stolen and are ordered to sprint off and plant you in your grave. Others, notably the ones who give the orders, put the book there for it to be stolen."

  "Why the hell would they want to do that?"

  "Because it suits their purposes, obviously."

  "And what's your purpose in telling me all this?" Dante said.

  Cally just laughed. "A good question. Listen. Do you want to save your friend?"

  "Of course."

  "Do you think you can do it alone?"

  "I think a lot of them will die," Dante said. A crow cawed from among the graves. Cally's own mouth stayed shut. "No," Dante admitted. "There's too many of them."

  "It turns out true justice can always be made up for with numbers," Cally agreed, clenching his fists and cracking his knuckles. "It's enough to make a man wonder if there's any such thing. On the other hand, a pure state of justice wouldn't be sullied just because—"

  "Can you help me or not?" Dante grabbed the old man's arm. A cold shock ran from his fingers to his shoulder and he pulled away. "What are you?"

  "You know what I am," Cally said, deadly soft, and the whole world went dark. Dante staggered back, hands shielding his face until he saw the overcast light of mid-afternoon, the silent flight of birds, the fall of rain, the row on row of long-buried bones. When he looked back at Cally, he looked old and skinny as ever.

  "Will you help me?"

  "Teach you," Cally corrected, holding up a finger. "'Enhance your knowledge' may be a more accurate phrase. I trust all that running hasn't left much time for reading."

  "Right again," Dante said slowly. "How do you know all this?"

  "Simple deduction," the old man said, "and having lived an awful many years in the company of men too given to scheming."

  "So why do they want people to steal the Cycle?"

  Cally sucked his teeth, smacked his lips. "You should know that already."

  "Until a few minutes ago I was under the impression its theft was a capital crime."

  "Who is Arawn?"

  "Is this a trick?"

  "Humor me."

  "The god of death," Dante said. His face flushed, but he let his simplification stand.

  "More like the god who greets the dead and transfers them to what comes next. What else?"

  "I don't know. He's Carvahal's brother."

  A gleam took Cally's eye. "And the history between the two?"

  "Not very good." Dante frowned. "He gave Carvahal the secret of fire, then Carvahal walled him up so he'd get all the credit."

  Cally raised his eyebrows. Dante thought he had the answer, but it was too wild, too conspiratorial. The old man sighed and dropped his eyes.

  "And you seemed so promising."

  "They want to release Arawn from his prison," Dante blurted. "And they want someone to steal the book because—they can't do it themselves?"

  "You'd make a decent rhetorician," Cally said, applauding.

  "I can't do that! I don't even know what I'm doing!"

  "Oh, indeed. It's more complicated than that. Much more complicated. But the book is bait for the kind of person who might be able to help them. Running you through all the rigamarole like that—"

  "What?" He drew back. "To weed out the ones who can't help?"

  Cally bit his lip and wagged his head, weighing the statement. "Something like that."

  "Isn't trying to kill me a little extreme? Couldn't they just have me read a few pages and then have a go? Or, you know, ask whether I've ever seen a shadow slithering around like a snake? Wouldn't that be easier than some big charade where either I die or a lot of them do?"

  "First off, the minions who've been chasing you don't know anything more than that you stole t
he book. They really do just want you dead." Cally scowled. "I told you, it's complicated."

  "Is that your word for insane?"

  "Lower your voice, for the gods' sakes," the old man winced, patting the air with his hands. "It's one of those things that's worked, no matter how crazy it sounds, so it's hardly worth getting into why it works. It has a lot to do with the fact everyone else thinks they're dead in these lands, so if they don't want to spill the beans they have to be elaborately sneaky about these things. The rest of it's one of those webs of politics where understanding it would take a lifetime of history and then another lifetime of theology. If it turns out you've got two lifetimes to spare we'll hash it out in front of a hearth some day, but for now, stop asking stupid questions and just believe what I'm telling you."

  "And what's your role in this web?" Dante said, ignoring the bevy of suspicions that popped up whenever anyone talked about taking something on faith. "Why are we even talking right now?"

  "Because I happen to think my brother believers are full of shit." He looked around himself, as if noticing their surroundings for the first time. "What are you doing staying in a cemetery, anyway?"

  "No one comes to a graveyard if they can help it."

  "Smart. Smart enough to ask your damned question a third time." Cally sighed, wrinkling his nose, then laughed just as suddenly. It was supposed to be charming, Dante saw, but he found the man's shifts of mood jarring, a sign of a mind more fractured than fanciful. "I am not a fanatic of their ends-over-means philosophy. That's what caused all this trouble in the first place." He tugged his beard, far away. "So. I'm cast out. Meanwhile, they've found a way to tell people about the power of the book and the truth of Arawn without exposing themselves, then recruit the few who can actually make any use of it. But you know what happens to tools that don't get the job done, right? Or tools that ask too many questions?"

  "What?"

  "They're thrown away, you idiot." Cally huffed. His breath curled in the moist air. "But I know the same things they do." He narrowed his eyes, sly. "The things that can't be learned by reading the Cycle. I can turn raw men into great men, and in so doing steal them away from the hands of my foes."