I’m being a fool, I know, thought Heriot. Winking at Death for the second time today. Beckoning him on this time. But he’s playing hard to get. He looked ahead, down an empty street, then flung his arms wide. “Hey, Death! Here I am!” he cried. “Give me a hug!”
And suddenly, as if Death were responding, there was movement in a narrow alley to their right—a quick padding sound as something came rushing toward them.
“Trouble!” yelled Cayley.
“I know,” Heriot replied. Now! Now! He desperately reached back into himself, feeling for that hidden connection, that source of the power he had drawn on so automatically earlier in the day. Yes! Ah, yes! Relief! So that was how! There! Power! I have you. . . .
Suddenly men burst out of that black slot, while the buildings on either side leaned forward as if eager to inhale the scent of spilled blood. Two against five! He heard the metallic hiss as Cayley drew her sword from its sheath. A sword! What was a sword? He was the Magician of Hoad. Now! He felt rather than said the word (though his lips shaped it), sending it out like an arrow of power to strike and dissolve into the leaders. Ignite! he ordered silently, with an energy as immediate as thought. And even as, for the second time that day, a blade was raised to strike him, the lead assailant screamed and flung himself to the ground, rolling and lashing at his baggy clothes as they burst into active flame. The man beside him fell too. One of the remaining three shrank back, then tumbled forward onto his knees, crying out, but with dismay, not pain—beating at the flames with his bare hands, trying to help his friends. The other two men yelled and fled back into the alley.
“Put that silly sword away and walk,” Heriot said to Cayley. “Stroll on.” So they strolled on, away from the screaming and confusion, into the tangling embrace of the edge. My child! the city seemed to say, devouring Heriot once more. My deathly child, more murderous than the murderers! The Hidden Warrior! Yes! What was the sword or the spear compared to a wish, a command, a single impulse with the substance of a weapon? Around a corner . . . around another corner . . . and he was released. The city’s tormented arms suddenly flung themselves wide, as if the edge had become a street conjurer, gesturing in a moment of revelation: See what I was holding, hidden under my cloak! Your grove is waiting for you! Go home! Heriot and Cayley had regained the wall that enclosed the noble heart of the inner city. The leaning buildings shrank back. Now, above the wall, Heriot and Cayley could make out the highest towers of the King’s castle, distant but dominating the other buildings—opaque, flat black shapes against a clear, dark sky salted with stars. As they passed through the gate, Heriot showed his medallion of passage to the watchmen, but they knew him and merely nodded as he and Cayley went by. It was night in the heart of the city, just as it had been night at the edge, but here it was a safe darkness. Roads were clearly marked out with regular flares and torches—with moonlight too, for the moon was rising beyond the castle towers.
“How did you do that—what you did back there?” Cayley asked.
“I’m the Magician, remember?” Heriot said, somewhat boastfully. He felt he was entitled to boast. “It seems the world’s elements are my well-trained dogs. Come when I whistle. Do what I tell them to.”
“I’m your dog,” Cayley said indignantly. “You should have turned me loose on them . . . me with my warrior sword. It would have been practice for me.”
“Forget that warrior business,” Heriot said. “Be what you really are and I’ll look after you.”
“You tell me to forget it because I’m a girl. Which you didn’t know, in spite of your powers! I had to tell you!” said Cayley.
“There have to be a few surprises in the world, even for magicians,” said Heriot. “And you’re a friend, and I don’t read friends.”
“You say you don’t read friends, but I’ve felt you beat against me, every now and then, like a bee against glass,” said Cayley complacently. “Friend or not, I’m the one you can’t read.”
“Oh well, that’s true,” Heriot answered. “And it’s true that at times I’ve been too curious about you to resist temptation. But you’re more closed in than anyone I’ve ever met.”
Now he and Cayley were walking through open court-yards, past houses that stood apart from one another. The scent of gardens mixed with the city smells.
“Diamond!” Heriot spoke the name of the city aloud, and as his voice edged back into his ears, he heard not only defiance (for he did not want the city to consume him) but his fascination with the city as well.
“Diamond!” said the echo at his side. But Cayley was laughing, deriding the city, using laughter to ward off its power. She skipped ahead and spun like a dancer.
“Your war dance,” Heriot said. “But we have to be what we’re born to be. You’re a girl, and in the end men are just stronger. You might make a good defense with that sword of yours, but a strong man will still strike you down.”
“I work at keeping my arm strong,” Cayley protested. “Work at it! Work at it! Do chin-ups on branches. You! You think you’ll gentle me down and make a woman of me, don’t you? You think I’ll wear skirts and have children.”
Heriot stared at her and shook his head. “I have considered the idea,” he admitted. “But so far, you and skirts and children—well, that idea just doesn’t work. But the warrior idea doesn’t work either. How can it?”
Cayley laughed. “Girl or not, I’ve got that warrior dance bred in my bones. Maybe I’ll never be strong in the way of most heroes, but my arm can be strong enough. And in my head I’m nothing but strong.”
“Well,” said Heriot, “it doesn’t matter right now what we are or what we might be. We’ll slump down on the bench by the cabin, just being easy at last and listening to the wind in the trees. And then we’ll go to our beds.”
4.
At last they were walking through the King’s grove once more. Light from the flares set along the paths crept under the trees. Moonlight struggled in from above. Home! Their cottage was ahead of them, and a dark figure was pacing up and down by the door. But they were in a safe place. The darkness was friendly, and the figure was that of a friend. Roth clapped his hands high above his head in greeting.
“Him again!” said Cayley, moving away from Heriot a little, dancing and spinning from one patch of light to another. She knew this small landscape by heart.
“I called in on my way back,” said Roth. “You weren’t here. I wondered . . .”
“Have they asked for me?” Heriot asked, looking suddenly anxious. “The King . . .?”
“No! I just thought about that cider you promised me,” said Roth. Heriot relaxed again, watching Cayley off to his right, gesturing at the air, then whirling away under the apple trees according to some inward music, striking out at the empty space around her as she leaped from shadow to shadow.
“What’s he doing that for?” asked Roth, sounding irritated.
“It’s his private game,” Heriot said. “He fills the air with enemies and fights them off. He’s a child of the edge, remember—more a true man of Hoad than any of you lords—so he’s always on his guard.”
“The edge!” exclaimed Roth accusingly, suddenly solving a puzzle. “You’ve been wandering around on the edge. I can smell it on you.”
“You’re just jealous,” said Heriot. “Walking around out there is too much for lords and princes. Too much for you! But me—I’ve just tested myself. It isn’t too much for me. I’ve won through twice in the same day.”
But as he was boasting, there, in the very heart of his safe place, someone stepped out of the shadows behind him and struck him down.
The blow was like a flash of harsh light. There was not even a fraction of a moment of confrontation in which he might have made a magical connection. Orchard grass folded over him. Just for a moment, he smelled it and the earth it sprang from, and then he lost sight and sound and smell— lost everything.
5.
Was it a day . . . an hour . . . a moment later? First there was
the smell of the earth, then the touch of the grass, and then a voice calling his name—his own voice, summoning him back into the world. Ordinary sounds came back. Voices— other voices—broke in, cursing and crying out. That thudding! That clashing! Lying on his back, Heriot rolled his head right, then left, making a little cradle for it in the long grass as he stared up into the branches of the apple trees, thickly black against the moonlit sky. Someone screamed out. Feet kicked against his sprawling legs, and somewhere above him someone stumbled and cursed. And the world, coming back to him, brought a sudden realization. Hours earlier he had become aware of a threat against someone close to the King. Now he knew. He had been the target. He, the King’s Magician, had been the threatened one. Heriot propped himself up, first on one elbow and then on the other. A theater opened up before him.
For there, between curtains of shadow and shafts of silver, Cayley leaped and fought, not one but two men, holding Death away from him. A third man was lying a little to his left, dead already, perhaps—certainly no longer interested in any sort of battle. The two men charged in on Cayley from either side, but she spun away from them and they found themselves raising their daggers at one another, while Cayley, having slipped from their threat, became a threat of her own.
For the third time that day, Heriot saw light run a quick finger along a thrusting blade. Three blades! Three! The fairy-talenumber. I’m living in a fairy tale. Things happen three times in fairy tales and change on the third time. One of the men dropped his knife, yelping and clapping his hands to his belly, while the other lunged at Cayley with a graceful certainty. But the street rat was already spinning away. The lunge missed. The man leaped back, then charged once more, shouting. Heriot recognized the voice, though he had never heard it raised in quite this way before.
“Roth!” he said aloud. “Hey, you! You’re my friend!” But his voice was confused, and it cracked. Weary grief, with fear as a partner, filled him. Roth! A Dannorad man after all. First and last, a Dannorad man. Urging him to stay in a safe place so he could be found . . . to stand trustingly still so that he could be easily killed.
Roth’s long dagger clashed against Cayley’s sword. He tried to strike while she was off guard, but in the very act of countering the blow, Cayley slanted her sword blade so that Roth’s blade slipped downward into the grass. Then she leaped away, moving, with a pure certainty, not backward but sideways.
The dance! thought Heriot. The dance! And amazingly, for less than a second, the image of a bright, sunlit orchard imposed itself over the dark one as Cayley danced and spun. Something that felt like a beetle ran down Heriot’s temple and curved toward his chin as he sat up. Blood. This place he had believed to be home—that friend he had believed to be a comfortable companion—both were as treacherous as anything out on the edge of the city. Worse, for he had trusted both the place and the man. Now the second injured man tried to lift himself, cursing and groaning. Roth swung at Cayley again. Reaching into himself, Heriot tried to lock into that connection he had used twice already that day: once without meaning to, the second time to determine just what he was able to do with it.
“Stagger!” he commanded. “Stagger and fall!” The point of connection was there, but dazed as he was, he could not quite connect.
Roth, however, must have felt the worm turn in his head, for he shot a sideways glance at Heriot, sitting under the apple trees, and then made for him, blade raised.
“Magician!” he screamed, as if it were a term of abuse.
But Cayley leaped beside him. Her sword-thrust slid under Roth’s ribs—sank beyond his ribs. Heriot flung himself to one side as Roth tumbled forward, thrashing wildly. There, in the long orchard grass that only that afternoon had seemed so pure and innocent, Roth kicked and twitched, drummed the ground with his feet, and at last grew still.
How long had it taken? It felt like forever. It felt instantaneous. Another beetle of blood ran down the side of Heriot’s face as he and Cayley faced one another.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
But Heriot did not answer her—at least he did not answer her question. “You are a warrior,” he said. His voice had the curious astonished resignation of someone confronting inevitability. “Cayley. Yes! You really are a warrior. A hidden warrior. The Hidden Warrior, perhaps. The one that springs from the very stuff of Hoad.”
It was a truth that seemed at that moment like an ultimate truth—like the truth that binds the earth to the sun and holds the sun to its place among the stars. Then Heriot looked down at Roth and understood that a sort of friendship had truly existed between them, but it had not been strong enough to resist the assertion of another, deeper identity. Heriot saw that Roth’s wish to be the hero of his own first country, set out like a poem in Roth’s fading self, had overcome everything else. Heriot’s own death would have been Roth’s ultimate assertion that he was a Dannorad man. Staring down at his friend, all Heriot could feel was anguish.
“He was my friend!” he exclaimed. “My friend! But perhaps, in the end, magicians just don’t have friends.”
“Hey! Look at me,” said Cayley, falling on her knees beside him. Heriot stared at her.
“My sword,” she said. “I take it in my hand and I feel I’m dancing with a true partner. I’ve told you that. I feel the blow of it and the flow of it. But hey! You’re melted into that very blade. You dance with me—strike with me, true as the ring of steel.”
Heriot sighed. “I’m coming back into myself,” he said. He even smiled a little. He struggled to his feet. “Roth! He seemed like a friend. But—never mind! Not right now! Let me lean on you.”
“Lean as heavily as you like,” said Cayley. “I can be strong for you. Hey! Magician! Warrior! Two-edged! None of them will be able to stand against us.”
“Side by side, back to back against the world—that’s us,” Heriot agreed. “Two warriors! We’ll take them by surprise, one day soon. But you’re the hidden one! I’m the one out there, gesturing and saying, ‘Look at me.’ ”
“You do run on,” said Cayley. “Someone comes at you to kill you and you keep on talking.”
Heriot nodded. “I’m propped up by words. Now let’s get the guards. I’ll weep a bit later on—think it all through. And then I’ll sit down and have a drink of cider, perhaps.” And, Heriot’s hand on Cayley’s shoulder, they set off through the moonlit midnight orchard, moving deeper and deeper into their overlapping fairy tales, vigilant and wary, for there were no safe places for the Magician and the Warrior.
MARGARET MAHY
MARGARET MAHY has been writing since the age of seven and is one of New Zealand’s best-known writers of children’s books. When she was a child, she envied boys for the adventurous roles they were allowed to play: cowboys and soldiers (for she grew up during World War II). She loved reading adventure stories, especially King Solomon’s Mines, and wanted to live a daring life. The boys down the road were not supposed to play with her, as their father thought it would turn them into “sissies.” (Margaret thinks that she actually played tougher games than they did!) As to the characters Heriot and Cayley in “Hidden Warriors,” they come from a longer story that very well may become a book someday.
Margaret writes in a range of styles for differing age groups, including picture books, broadly comic stories for younger readers, and complex novels for older readers. She has won the Carnegie Medal of the British Library Association twice, the IBBY Honour Book Award, and the Observer Teenage Fiction Award, as well as many more prizes in her native New Zealand, including the Esther Glen Award four times and the AIM Book Award ( Junior). In February 1993 she was awarded New Zealand’s highest honor, the Order of New Zealand, which is only ever held by twenty people alive at any one time!
Margaret lives on the South Island of New Zealand. When she is at home, she spends lots of time writing, ordering the cats and dogs around (not very successfully), and fussing over her granddaughters.
EMERGING LEGACY
Doranna Durg
in
KELYN KNEW SHE WAS the clumsy one.
Even if she hadn’t noticed it herself—with all the tripping, stumbling, dropping things, and running into overhangs and low branches she’d done—the others in her hunting pack weren’t about to let her forget. How unfortunate that the words “Clumsy Kelyn” rolled off their tongues so easily.
All the same, she was still alive. They couldn’t say that about Sigre, whose favorite craggy perch Kelyn now occupied, her feet dangling comfortably over the edge of a drop so deep that she found herself looking down on the distant treetops below. She took a generous bite of the dried plum she’d brought with her to this quiet moment and spat the pit out into the misty morning air.
She lost sight of it long before it reached the trees— though last week, she’d had no problem watching Sigre all the way down. Or hearing her, a fading scream that turned to echoes before Sigre disappeared into the pines below.
There were some who said it should have been Kelyn. Sigre had always been light of foot, always graceful on the ledges and narrow, dangerous trails of these high, craggy mountains. She’d always been their trailblazer, taking them to new places in the thin air, finding them new hunting grounds.
Kelyn missed her—but the scattered community at the base of the mountain range would miss Kelyn even more. Kelyn’s was the pack that had brought in the most meat from their summer hunting, providing the old and the young with plenty. This pack—young adults in training under the harshest of teachers, the high Keturan wilderness—provided for their own families and more, and at the end of each summer they descended to the harsh rolling terrain a little more seasoned, a little more capable. A little more prepared to survive this difficult climate with its lushly coated rock cats and other predatory dangers.
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