Thameron was accepted for the job, although the ship master complained that he looked too scrawny to be a good worker. Still, he needed hands onboard. They set sail that evening; Thameron worked like a beast until nightfall when, almost fainting, he made his way to the common table in the hold and devoured the food set before him (a stew that resembled someone’s mischievous regurgitation). He managed to rebut several crude comments from the other sailors on board and fell into an exhausted sleep in his hammock.
As the days passed on the Rider, Thameron became annealed by the rigors of his duties; the work seemed to improve both his body and his outlook. He told no one that for all his life he had been a priest; Bithitu only knew with what derision that would have been met. But to explain his boyish naiveté about many of the basic things of life, he made up a story concerning his past as a servant in a rich man’s house. He had had to do nothing all his days (he claimed) except wait on tables and clean floors; he had educated himself with the help of a friendly priest and one of the wealthy man’s daughters. But the man’s businesses had failed, and Thameron had been let go. He had been out in the world only a month.
The Rider made port at Abustad to take on supplies, continued west to Elpet to make a partial exchange of crew, took on more cargo at Ovoros, and reached Hilum five days later. As was usual, the crew members were paid half their earnings and allowed a night ashore. Thameron, in the company of seven or eight other sailors, visited many dockside taverns, nearly involved himself in three fistfights, drank brew as he never had in his life and became very drunk, and awoke, half insane with a pounding headache, in a strange room, late at night, with a fat, middle-aged woman who informed him that he had been the finest lover she had ever experienced and that he owed her two in short gold for her amorous services.
Thameron, appalled, refused to pay, so the fat woman began to scream and rave. Frightened, the young man ran from the room—tying his belt as he did so—and escaped down a hallway as thunderous boot falls resounded behind him. Running through a back door, he discovered an alley, hurried down it, and continued to race through a maze of back streets and alleyways until he came near the docks. But greater misfortune awaited him there.
He was young, slim, and not unhandsome. Two large ruffians, deckhands, spotted him wandering half drunk along the quays, to all appearances homeless and nameless. For sport they accosted him, striking Thameron brutally and partially ripping away his trousers, exposing his buttocks. Thameron screamed, thrashed as though he were moon-mad, and worked his way free to escape back up the street. He hid in an alley. There, caring for his wounds as well as he could, he fell asleep.
When he awoke, it was to the bright light of late morning. Aware that he had to be back at the Rider in time for the morning tide, he raced through the crowded streets, afraid that the ship’s master would beat him or curtail some of his payment for his tardiness. But he received a rude shock when he reached the quay and spotted the Rider nowhere in sight. Frantic, Thameron searched up and down the long rows of anchored ships and finally asked where the merchanter was moored. Told to inquire at a shipping office, he learned to his dismay that the Rider had set sail on the morning flood, as scheduled, without him aboard.
* * * *
Life, he discovered, was—for the inexperienced and the unaware—a thing of cruelty, of confusion, a series of pits and mazes, of bluffs and beatings, and a fight for survival.
He wandered throughout Hilum, seeking work, gradually using up the limited money that remained from his half-pay as a sailor. For three days, he lived in near desperation, sleeping in alleys, buying only the most meager amounts of food, even begging in an attempt to save what money he still had. There was a Temple of Bithitu in Hilum, but Thameron did not visit it—a matter of pride. In unguarded moments, when he reflected on his life in the temple in Erusabad, it was with disgust and loathing, and he refused to admit that his present life was less rewarding materially than had been his spiritual life in the Holy City.
But when he remembered Assia, it was with utter regret, for he had left her on a whim, full of naive ambitions and woeful ignorance, and he had been brought low as a lesson. The night of love they had spent together brought an ache to his bowels; her promises that indeed she did love him reduced Thameron to despair. They were very far apart, and he wanted her near him, he wanted her, he wanted Assia.
At last he found work in Hilum with a merchant’s caravan that was traveling inland to trade with small villages and towns. When Thameron returned to Hilum two weeks later, it was with money in his purse and a heart more reconciled than ever to the vagaries and vicissitudes of life.
Following yet another period of aimlessly casting about in the city, Thameron secured a job on board the Dreamer, doing the common labor he had done before. This was not a mercantile galley, however, but a pleasure barge, one of many that made a slow passage across the Ursalion Sea to the port of Erphat far to the south.
Only the wealthiest bought passage on this ship, and they made the journey for but one purpose: to spend languorous days and incensed nights in the company of prostitutes and other seductive traders of vices, who were used like so many pleasure-giving devices during the voyage. Wealthy aristocrats bought the services of whole companies of boys and girls for long afternoons and evenings. Deformed prostitutes commanded and earned high prices. Rich dowagers were serviced, often in the galleries or out in the open air, by gigantic men of all races. One old man, addicted to the splendors of the narghile, relaxed in fumy dreams as nude courtesans performed tongue-dances up and down his body. An old woman particularly inexhaustible in her need for pretty young girls would savagely bite and scratch the children while in orgasmic throes, hour after hour. Two notorious businessmen often shared the delicacies of a handsomely painted crippled boy, day after day after rose-colored day. Other women performed secret tricks with pearls and oddly-shaped instruments of ivory and glass. Narcophiles shrieked into the night as the lovers atop them transformed into giant laughing beetles or creatures from the depths of the sea.
Thameron quickly became disgusted with all of them, but—as he had been warned by his employer—he did not interfere with either the patrons on board or the prostitutes. Daily he hauled lines, washed decks, and cleaned out the cabins, meanwhile overhearing the choruses of moans, screams, and yelps of pain and pleasure that filled the atmosphere of the barge. He came to regard this ship as a swamp or a hell, and its passengers as inhabitants of some especially loathsome, transported pit.
The slow days passed, misty with incense and aromatic excesses, and Thameron found himself watching one particular young prostitute on the ship. After a time, he noticed that she returned his glances. She reminded him somewhat of Assia. Her body was similar to Assia’s—the girl was short but slim, with slender legs and large breasts. She had a head of foamy dark hair. Her face was something like Assia’s, too, with heavy dark eyes and generous, full lips. And when, one afternoon, the young woman made a comment in passing to Thameron, he told himself that her voice, while not as musical or as deep as Assia’s, nevertheless contained a quality that seemed to—
He wanted her.
He wanted Assia, but he wanted this girl.
Thameron fought nightly with himself against this madness; he tried vainly to retrieve memories of the life he had had before leaving Erusabad. Masturbating frequently every night, he invoked remembrances of Assia’s kisses as though performing a magical ceremony. But everything that had seemed golden or splendid to him previously—small moments, laughter, beautiful visions, wise teachings—now he regarded as lies or mistakes. Even the ring Hapad had given him (which he twisted continually around his finger, in what had become a nervous habit) seemed to him symbolic only of elements of his life forever lost.
When the pleasure barge docked at Erphat and the voyagers disembarked for a season of continued play, Thameron worked up the courage to talk to the young prostitute. He found her vapid and dull witted and interested only i
n what money he could provide her with or what strange new sensations he could introduce her to. Yet, still, he desired her. When night came down, they both sneaked off the ship; they passed the evening in Erphat with talk and lovemaking. Thameron discovered that there was more to appreciate in the young woman than he had previously thought; she, for her part, decided that she liked Thameron’s eyes and the shape of his buttocks, the size of his penis and the way he talked (so different from the coarse men she knew), and his somewhat savage, somewhat boyish manner of making love.
In the morning, Thameron decided not to make the return crossing on the pleasure ship; he told the girl that he would move on and with his money perhaps travel overland. The young woman asked him if he would like a companion.
* * * *
The weeks passed as they journeyed throughout the southlands, gradually making their way north. Quickly Thameron lost interest in the girl, but because he didn’t want to abandon her outright, he kept her with him. Meanwhile, she began to complain frequently. One night, they had an intensely vicious argument; Thameron had been drinking and, outraged at some of the things the girl said to him, he struck her. She laughed at him. He struck her again and began to beat her, and as he did, visions of his old life came to him: the temple, Muthulis, Andoparas, rich men, rich women—all moved like phantoms suddenly alive in his brain, goading him on to strike the more brutally. At last, awakening from this, he stopped and stared at the woman, stared at what he had done: her bloody face, the wet red blood that drooled from her nose and mouth. Aghast, Thameron dropped to the floor and groveled at the young woman’s feet; she pulled him up and kissed him passionately, smearing her blood on his mouth and face. They made love, violent love, on the floor of their rented room, and as they made love, the girl shrieked with delight and laughed and begged Thameron to slap her, to continue slapping her as he ravished her.…
They continued north. It became habitual for the young woman to steal away from Thameron for an afternoon or an evening, always returning with the soiled smell of other lovers about her and gold in her purse. She shared the gold with Thameron, and sometimes (thinking it would excite him), told him about the things her lovers did to her. But her stories depressed him and reminded him how alone he was.
One afternoon when she was gone, Thameron wandered the streets of the city of Odema and passed beneath the shadow of a holy place. It was not one of Bithitu’s temples, but the effect was as though it were. Thameron felt a second self erupt from inside him; in the middle of the street, he began screaming like a madman. Spit flew from his mouth, and astonished passers-by jumped from his path. A priest hurried from the church to aid him, but Thameron ran away.
Without waiting for the young woman to return, he left the city. He bought a donkey for half the money he had in his purse and went north; in two days, he reached Karshesht. Karshesht, he knew, was the first large city one came to when sailing south from Erusabad. So he had, in his travels, almost come completely in a circle, and he was close, very close, to the Holy City. Yet he was not sure if he wanted to continue to Erusabad, so he sold his donkey, rented a room above a tavern, and proceeded to squander his remaining money for the next three days, drinking wine at a table in the serving room.
Late one evening when there was a chill in the air, Thameron was sitting at his table in a stupor. He paid no attention to anyone, not patrons or singers or prostitutes; but he did look up when the door of the tavern opened and a pale man of medium size stepped in. Voices hushed as he entered; people stared, then looked away. Thameron, dully aware of the reaction, was intrigued.
The stranger was dressed in the robes of a scholar. He carried, also, a tall walking stick of hardwood carved with a variety of odd sigils and cartouches. He was the most profoundly disturbing person Thameron had ever looked upon; there was a sense of repulsion, of foulness—but also of strength—emanating from him.
The pale man walked straight across the floor to the counter and demanded a jug of wine. It was delivered hastily, and the stranger paid with a gold piece. Even from where Thameron sat, he could see that it was no ordinary gold piece: it seemed larger, and thicker, than coins currently in circulation. The stranger took his wine, the tavern keeper made no remark about his coin, and the man quickly turned on his heel and passed again across the room. Ignoring the eyes upon him, he left.
Immediately, babble broke out. Thameron overheard whispers of conversation near him. Turning to a soldier seated at the next table, he asked him—and the gangly red-haired girl bouncing in his lap—if he knew who the stranger might be.
“I know!” the girl replied with an air of exaggerated mystery.
“Who is he, then?”
“His name is—”
“Shut up!” the soldier warned her nervously and slapped her head.
“His name,” she told Thameron insistently, “is Garbaros, and he’s—”
“All right!”
“—a wizard, is what he is!”
Thameron became alert, despite all of the wine. “What is he?”
“He’s a—”
“Shut up!” The soldier grabbed the woman’s hair and pulled it back so that her head jerked. “And you—” to Thameron “—you shut up, too!”
Thameron sat for a long moment, swaying somewhat in his chair. Then, impulsively, drunk, he moved, ran across the tavern floor, pulled open the door, and hurried outside.
The night was cold. Thameron, sweating, already too drunk with wine, felt himself becoming ill from the blast of chill wind that wrapped around him. He ran down the path to the dirt road out front and looked up and down it for any sign of Garbaros. He saw no one, so he began to run, calling out the strange name. He ran on wobbly legs, on numb feet he barely felt.
“Fool! What do you want?”
Thameron yelped, astonished, and almost fell on his face as he skidded to a halt. Just before him, standing under a tree, stood the man in the scholar’s robes. “Are—are—”
“Idiot! You’re drunk. Go back to your women and your dice.”
“I—I want to—” Thameron stared into the man’s eyes; they were singular eyes, deep-set but almost luminous in the night. “I want to—talk with you—”
“I have nothing to say to drunken idiots.”
“Please, please. I want to know—”
The sorcerer stared at him; Thameron felt a wave of power strike him, almost as palpable as a slap in the face. He wondered if it were his imagination—or the wine.
“Is…your name Garbaros?” he slurred.
The man smiled. His expression was almost sinister. “No,” he replied.
“But—but they said—”
“My name is Guburus. And they said I’m a sorcerer.”
“Yes. Yes, they did.”
“Don’t you have enough sense to be frightened of sorcerers? Or are you too drunk?”
There was an uneasy pause as Thameron cleared his throat and tried to plan what he should say next. He felt as uncomfortable as he had that day he had faced his masters during his interview before the holy council. He flustered, coughed, and finally managed to admit, “I am drunk. Yes. But I want— My name is Thameron. I want you to— Wait.” He burped.
“To what, boy named Thameron?”
“I want to know if you’ll let me…travel with you. Be your—your servant. I want to study with you.”
“But I don’t want you to study with me. I don’t need a servant.”
“Listen to me, please.” His senses were clearing; the night was chill; and this man’s eyes were inhumanly bright and pulling him in. “I—I was once a priest. I studied— I was thrown out of my temple—” Unable to find words, he lifted an arm and showed Guburus his right hand; upon one finger of it was Hapad’s ring.
The sorcerer’s brows curled. “You were a priest to Bithitu?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“You lie. From whom did you steal that ring?”
“I did not steal it, Gobor—Lord Garbaros.”
> “Guburus.”
“I was a zealous priest. I did too much. I was punished. They punished me. Now I have had to wander. I have seen the world, I have smelled its stench—”
“A victim of life. You wish to escape it, or you wish to I learn if there is more.”
“I know there is more.”
“How do you know?”
“Was I born only for this?” Thameron protested, and swept an arm around him.
Guburus sighed. “You want power. You want revenge on someone. Or you think that by becoming a dark mystic, you can regain what you lost as a priest.”
“I don’t want to be a priest. But I’m better than other men, I know I am. Yet I’m trapped with them. I have searched— All that happens to me—I fall into the mud, I am attacked, humiliated—”
“Yet you sincerely feel that you are better than other men, and gifted?”
“Yes,” Thameron proclaimed, his voice gathering strength. “Yes, I do.”
Guburus regarded him. “Are you willing to trade years of isolation, a lonely existence, for knowledge beyond what taverns and streets can teach?”
“I have known solitude,” Thameron answered, his voice dropping. “I have been alone in crowds of men, and I have been alone by myself. I know that humanity is weak, and yet I am strong. I have wondered about the rain, and the sunlight.” He faced Guburus intently. “I know that there is some mystery that joins all things to some purpose, some great design. But I dwell only among the fragments, the pieces that do not join.”
“Thameron,” the sorcerer asked him in a deep voice, “do you feel a light within you?”
“Guburus, I do. Yet it shows me no path.”
“The path will find you, if you truly have the light.” He reached out with a robed arm and passed an open hand over Thameron’s face. “You,” he whispered “—aye, you have the light within you.”
“Guburus, please. I will be your servant, I will be your slave. I want to study with you, if indeed you can teach me, if indeed you are a sorcerer.”
The West Is Dying Page 16
