The Eye of Night

by Pauline J. Alama

  “You wouldn't understand,” I said.

  “Gods, you sound like Torrin,” he said. “You may be thirty years old, and he thirteen, but you're still just a lad that's run from his father's home and not been found yet. Is this your corner?”

  “Yes,” I said, for we had reached my friends, Hwyn squinting up at us curiously, Trenara toying with a dandelion growing between the cobbles.

  Turl looked at Hwyn, then at me, with a mixture of horror and pity. “If you change your mind, you can find me in the Street of the Weavers, near the Spinners' Lane.” Then he left us to divide the little feast in peace.

  I set down the bottle of ale, opened my pack to reveal the rest of the booty, took out the leaf-wrapped bundle of cheese, and spread it on the cleanest cobblestone I could spy.

  Hwyn asked, “What did he mean, ‘If you change your mind’?”

  “He offered me a position,” I said, “partly for being my father's son.” I uncorked the ale. “Seven years dead and the old man's still chasing me.” I took a swig of the good malty brew; in this, at least, Turl had steered me right.

  “Why, was it a bad position?” Hwyn said.

  “Hmm? Oh, no.” I stuck my knife in the cheese and took another swig of ale as Hwyn sliced off a piece and broke it in half to share with Trenara. “You don't understand, do you, why it galls me to come to a strange town and find I'm still that son of Garmund the Sea-Trader, the one that survived?”

  “Maybe I'd understand,” Hwyn said, “if you told me.”

  “You tell me first,” I said, my nerves thoroughly jangled, “something—anything—who your parents were, why you were weeping—what your name is, for the gods' sake.”

  “I can't tell you that,” she said.

  “Fine, then.” I took another pull at the ale-jug, but it wasn't improving my mood.

  “Oh—seed-cakes!” Hwyn said, finally noticing the contents of my pack. “How did you know what I wanted?” At that, even I had to laugh.

  When the feast had been reduced to table-leavings, we eased into our day's performance, first tuning our voices together on the easiest children's counting song, heedless of whether anyone listened or not, then working toward some of the showier pieces and putting out the cup for coins as passersby began to linger near. But I was not up to the mark of the previous day's singing, distracted by thoughts of Hwyn's secrecy and her moods and Turl's pitying look and the road ahead, where things would be harder than they had been so far. Once I fell so badly behind on a round that Hwyn broke off with a baleful look.

  “For the gods' love, what's gotten into you?” she snapped. “Yesterday you could count!”

  “Sorry,” I said, but it only drove me further into my thoughts. What was I doing here, playing the minstrel, sleeping in the street, following a couple of strangers, one that couldn't have told me where we were going, one that wouldn't tell me where she'd come from? She doesn't even need me, I thought, hearing Hwyn's voice change one of my everyday sea chanteys into a strange mermaid-call. She's done Trenara's share of the work and half of mine; and if I dropped out of the song now, it would be much the same to the listeners. At least I can offer Turl and his family something they don't have.

  As if in answer to my thoughts, a barley-sugar sweet plunked into the cup from thin young fingers. I looked up to see solemn black eyes fixed on me.

  Just as I thought: rich, but no pocket-money, I ruminated. When the song was done, I said, “Torrin son of Turl, what brings you here?”

  “What did you mean about naming?”

  “Hmm?”

  “What you said in the Golden Chain: that the gods have named us first. What did you mean by it?” the boy said.

  “What do you think I meant by it?” I said, sounding like one of my old tutors.

  Hwyn looked at the boy, then at me, with a strangely wistful look. The audience, finding no new song forthcoming, began to drift away.

  “That my father is wrong?” the boy said hopefully. “That I should join the Tarvon Order?”

  I smiled. “I scarcely know where I belong, myself, let alone you. It's not so simple. St. Elfrith said we think we name our children, but the gods have been there first. You are your father's son, but that's not all you are. He did name you, but only the gods know what that name means in full. Whether your name calls you to the Tarvon Order, to trade, or to weaving North Magyan saddle-cloths is the great question that I cannot answer for you. Nor, I think, can your father, though he may try. In that we disagree.”

  “Then that is why he will not make you my tutor, though he said he would,” Torrin said.

  “Not so,” I said. “He offered me the position. He said you and I would get along—and I think, in that, he was right.”

  “But then—” the boy hesitated, “aren't you coming with us?”

  “Torrin, your father can't buy me for you like a handful of sweets. I have other work.”

  “Here?” The boy's gaze took everything in: the rotted vegetables left in the gutter near the stones that had been our bed; the flies; the tin cup for coins; the two meager bundles containing all our possessions.

  “Jereth,” Hwyn cut in, “you should consider the position. There's no other festival till St. Katred's Day, and the work will be worse, not better, where I'm going.”

  I spun toward her. “Why do you keep pushing me away?”

  “Will you listen to reason?” she said. “I'm not pushing you away. I'm trying to give you a choice. You said, when you joined me, you had nowhere else to go. Now you have another choice.”

  “I made my choice,” I said to her, half forgetting Torrin, who stood fidgeting with embarrassment before us. “I said I would follow you. Did you think that meant nothing?”

  “Well, I'm not holding you to it,” she said. “I'm not dragging you along on the strength of words spoken in haste. We were equal then: neither of us had anything to lose. We're not now.” With that, she picked up her pack and began striding away, leaving our patch of the market-square. Trenara, bewildered, got up and followed.

  “Hwyn!” I called after her.

  She cast a glance over her shoulder, but did not stop. A voice in my head said, you will not hear her voice again, or know whether she lives or dies, or how her mad quest ends. I glanced at the merchant's son, at my open pack and our performance spot; deciding quickly that the one could take care of himself and the others were unimportant, I ran after her.

  “Hwyn! For the gods' love,” I said, grasping her by the arm, “don't leave me like this.”

  She turned to face me. “Jereth, these are your people, your world. I don't want you to regret too late giving it up for a hasty promise to me. For the gods' sake, if you're going to leave me, leave now, while I still remember how to go on alone.”

  “Do you still remember that?” I said. “I don't. I'm begging you not to leave me; what language do I have to speak for you to hear me?”

  “The marks on my back were thirty lashes for theft,” she said. “There was no honest work for a stranger in Fledley, and I was caught with my hand in a merchant's pocket. I begged the constable to let me take off my shift, as I would have nothing to wear if the lash tore it; so by his mercy I was whipped naked before the market-square. That is the life I'm leading you into, if you follow me.”

  “Gods on the Wheel,” I said, “I wish we were going to Fledley, so I could beat the constable senseless. I wish I were a stronger defender for you. I know I'm not much use to you—”

  “Gods, Jereth,” said Hwyn, “is that what you were thinking?”

  “Isn't that what you were thinking, telling me how much harder things could be?”

  “No,” she said. “Honestly! What a thought!”

  “What a muddle,” I said. “Now someone more desperate will have taken our cup of coins. If only they've had the decency to leave the cup behind—”

  “You left the cup when you ran?”

  “Of course I did,” I said. “You were disappearing into the crowd.”

&nb
sp; “And your pack—with the cook-pot and the leftover cakes and ale,” she said.

  “I wasn't going to stop to bundle it up,” I said.

  “And your would-be student will have left by now,” she said. The crowd milled thick between us and the place we had been; I could not see whether everything was gone, but it seemed more than likely.

  “If Torrin could find us by himself, he can find his way back,” I said.

  “Bright Goddess, Jereth,” Hwyn said, “for the second time in your life, you've left all your possessions.” A smile slowly spread across her face.

  It took me a while to understand what she was smiling at. “It was a better choice the second time,” I said. “The Tarvon Order is an armload of dead rules walled up in stone houses like great tombs. You are alive. I don't want to burden you—”

  Just then, I heard a tentative voice at my side: “Brother Jereth?”

  Torrin son of Turl, red-faced and hesitant, stood clutching our cup of coins in one hand, my pack in the other, the ale-jug under his arm. “I saved your things for you. You can't leave anything unwatched in a place like this.”

  His father's words, I thought, accepting our things and bundling them up properly. “Thank you, Torrin. That was kind of you. Is there anything I can do for you in return?”

  “You're not going to come with us?”

  “No, lad,” I said. “It's a fine offer, but I have a better one.”

  He looked at me skeptically.

  “The Magyans have a legend,” I said, “of a firebird that makes its nest in the heart of a burning mountain. There is only one in all the world, so if you see it once in your life, you can be sure it will not come again. Its plumes, they say, are like the fire at the heart of the world. And some see the firebird and let it pass, holding it in memory, while they live out their lives as before; but maybe afterward everything they see seems dim beside that single fiery vision. Others see it and follow after it; they leave the life they have known and inherit a world of trouble, and hardship, and danger, and wonder, and joy.” I fixed my eyes on Hwyn as I spoke, but I could not tell from her expression what she heard in the story. “Only by journeying into trouble can you find the joy at the heart of the world—if you survive the journey. For some, it is better to stay in the known life. For others, the journey is the only life. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Yes—well, I think—no. Are you speaking of your journey or mine?” said Torrin. “You're speaking in symbols; you haven't seen any firebird. How do you know where to go?”

  “You don't,” I said. “You guess. You dream, or you listen to those who dream. You trust and risk betrayal. You make mistakes, and you try not to make the same ones twice. Torrin, this is all I can teach you. The Tarvon Monastery is not hard to find: down the Eastern Way, near the Potters'Lane. If your name leads you there, you don't need my guidance: go there. If you go of your own accord, they may accept you as an acolyte with or without your father's blessing. But beware of exchanging one false life for another. Ask yourself always—before you go there, before you are initiated, and especially, before you take vows—do you go there to follow your calling, or only to leave your father's world?”

  “Was that why you went?” the boy said.

  “In a sense,” I said. “My father was dead already. But a dead father can be a more relentless pursuer than a live one.”

  “Do you regret joining the Order?” said Torrin.

  I surprised myself by saying, “No, not now. Three months ago, when I left, I regretted it. I hated the high walls, the rules, the pieties that had become meaningless to me. But it was what I needed. A trapped animal will gnaw its own leg off, and the Order was the wound I had to give myself to break free. I can't say I recommend it, but it was the way I found out of my trap.”

  For a long while, the boy looked out in the direction I had pointed out to him. When he turned back to me, he wore a look of resolution. “Thank you,” he said. “You've been the best tutor I've ever had.” With that, he turned eastward, weaving his way through the crowd so nimbly that he was lost from sight before I could call him back.

  “What have I done?” I said.

  “Set him free?” Hwyn suggested.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe helped him into a new prison. Does he know what he's doing?”

  “Did you?” Hwyn said.

  “Not in the least,” I said.

  “Maybe that's why they give you seven years,” said Hwyn. “He'll have time to work it out.”

  “I hope so,” I said.

  “You told him the truth,” Hwyn said. “You told him what he needed. I think you did the best thing possible.”

  “His father won't see it that way when I tell him.”

  Hwyn stared at me, much as I had at her when she spoke of going to Kreyn.

  “Well, someone has to tell him where the boy went,” I said. “Torrin won't think of it; he thinks the old man doesn't care. I'm afraid that leaves me.”

  “He'll think it's your fault,” Hwyn said.

  “True,” I said, “but he can't kill me for it in front of the marketplace. The sooner I break the news, the better. You will be here when I come back, won't you?”

  “Of course,” she said. “I promise. You will come back, won't you?”

  “Nothing could keep me away.”

  The Street of the Weavers was a chaos of color and motion, great shops and small stalls jostling elbows to offer bolts of wool and linen and even the odd elusive glimpse of silk to dressmakers, tailors, upholsterers, drapers, housewives, ladies' maids, and ladies themselves, as well as to traders bound for places the weavers would never see. I stood wondering where in all this commotion to ask for Turl, when I heard his voice: “What do you mean you haven't seen him? Did I or did I not pay you extra to make sure the boys didn't leave the shop till I returned?”

  Fists clenched at his sides, Turl glowered over a spindly couple, simply dressed, with faces faded as Hwyn's shift. The woman ventured to speak: “He's so quiet. We could hear Tadric asking the dyers questions all the while, so we thought they were both there.”

  “Excuse me, sir,” I said. I had to say it three times before Turl spun around to confront me.

  “Garmund's son!” he sputtered. “You've picked the worst of all times to reconsider my offer. Torrin—”

  “I've seen Torrin,” I said.

  “He's gone, slipped off—” Turl blustered before my words sank in. “What?”

  “Torrin came to speak to me,” I said.

  “Well? Where is he?”

  “He went to join the Tarvon Order,” I said.

  “Bright Goddess's buttocks!” Turl sputtered. “What did you say to him?”

  “I told you before what I thought: the boy already knows his own mind,” I said. “I told him as much: that if he were called, he didn't need me to tell him what to do.”

  The words were barely out of my mouth before Turl's fist connected with my chin, sending me careening into a cart full of bolts of linen. I struck the back of my head sharply on a scale for weighing coins and sank to the cobblestones, dimly aware of an agitated tradesman scrambling about on the other side of the cart to rescue his precious wares from the dirty road.

  “Is that how you repay the interest I took in you?”

  “I gave Torrin the truth as best I could. I have given you the same,” I said, rubbing my head and rising stiffly to face him. He was half a head shorter than I; there was nothing to fear in him, but I did not want a fight. I held my hands before me, ready but open. “I know this news distresses you, but at least now you know where to find him.”

  “Who in the bum-hole of the world are you?” Turl sputtered, his hands still clenched at his sides. “Why don't you fight back or run? Why did you come to tell me this at all?”

  “I don't fight back because I know I gave first injury, although unwillingly. I don't run because I came here for a purpose. I came to tell you because you said you loved your son, and I did not want you to thin
k he was dead in an alley—and because Torrin thinks you hate him, and won't imagine that you might worry over him.”

  Turl frowned. “So you think you've done me a service, telling me this?”

  I shrugged. “I don't expect you to see it as such.”

  “Well, what did you expect?”

  “More or less what I got,” I said. “If I thought my advice were worth anything to you, I would counsel you to go to Torrin and say nothing for or against his choice. He may not be certain yet, but opposition will harden him. But as it is, my part here is done: you need no more words from me, and I need no more reminders of my childhood. I'd best go.”

  Turl's hands unclenched at his sides. “Jereth son of Garmund, you're a strange man. You didn't have to come here. You knew what I was likely to do—”

  “More or less,” I said. “If I'd known exactly, I'd have ducked. But I suppose the Rising God protects his own; he sent me to take that blow in place of Torrin.”

  “Is that what you think?” Turl said. “That if I couldn't vent my rage on some stranger, I'd be beating Torrin about the head for thwarting me?”

  I did not answer.

  “Gods! I hope the lad doesn't think the same. Well. I am sorry I struck you. I'm not myself.” Turl put his thick hands over his eyes. “Gods! I can hardly think. Everything is overturned. I can't leave Swevnalond now: not with Torrin stuck here, rooted in that monastery. There are no Tarvon houses outside Swevnalond—but then, you knew that, didn't you? I suppose I'll have to give those grasping priests some sort of donation as well; it will shame me if they take him in as a beggar. And half my worth tied up in provisions for a sea-voyage that will never come—and the Troubles sweeping down from the North to overtake us all—”

  “They are sweeping down over all the world,” I said softly. “You would not have escaped forever in Magya or Iskarron, I believe. Better to meet them boldly.”

  Turl took his hands from his face to stare at me. “Don't tell me you're a prophet!”

  “No, but I travel with one,” I said. “Tell me, will you really give up your plans of sea-trading for Torrin?”

  “Unless he comes to his senses, what else could I do?” said Turl.