Innkeeper's Song

by Peter S. Beagle

  Lukassa’s rage of knowledge seemed to ebb somewhat; when she spoke again, saying, “Here and here,” she sounded more like a child driven to exasperation by the sluggishness and stupidity of adults. “Here stood your friend, and here stood his friend—and here”—casually nodding to a near corner—“this was where the Others came from.” It was all so truly obvious to her.

  In that corner, which is stone and slate and mortar like the rest, there is no air, only cold. If the tower is gone today, as it may well be, that corner is still there. Lal and I looked at each other, and I know that we were thinking the same thing: This is not a corner, not a wall—this is a door, an open door. Behind us, Lukassa said impatiently, “There, where you stand—look, look,” and she hurried to join us, pointing into an emptiness so fierce that I had to struggle with an impulse to snatch her hand back before that ancient, murderous absence bit it off. Instead, I turned and spoke to her as soothingly as I could. “What other, Lukassa? What did he look like?”

  She actually stamped her foot. “Not he—the Others, the Others! The two men fought, they were so angry, and then the Others came.” She peered back and forth at us, only beginning to wonder now: a child first discovering fear in the faces of adults. She whispered, “You don’t. You don’t.”

  “Nothing comes uninvited from this kind of darkness,” I said to Lal, over Lukassa’s head. “There has to be a call.” Lal nodded. I asked the girl, “Who summoned the— the Others? Which man was it?” But she took hold of Lal’s hand and would not look at me.

  I repeated the question, and so did Lal—to no avail, for all her petting and coaxing. At last she gestured, let it be, and, to Lukassa, “The men fought, you say. Why did they fight, and how? Which of them won?” Lukassa remained silent, and I wished that I had brought the fox with us. She murmurs to him constantly; by now he surely knows far more about her than either of us does. And will continue to—I know him that well, at least.

  “Magic,” Lal said. “They fought with magic.” Lukassa pulled away from her, less by intent than because she was trembling so violently. Lal’s voice became sharper. “Lukassa, one of those two was the man we have sought so long, the old man who sang over his vegetable garden. If it were not for him—” She glanced quickly at me, hesitated, then turned Lukassa to face her again, pressing both of the girl’s hands together between her own. She said, clearly and deliberately, “No one but you can help us to find him, and you would be dead at the bottom of a river but for him. What happens from this moment is your choice.” The words rang like hoofbeats on the cold stones.

  Unless you are a long-practiced wizard (and sometimes even then), it isn’t good to spend more time than you have to within walls as encrusted with old wizardry as those. It causes mirages inside you, in your heart—I don’t know a better way to put it. In that moment, it seemed to me—no, it was—as though Lal were holding all of Lukassa in her two cupped palms like water, and that if she brimmed over them, or slid through Lal’s fingers, she would spill away into every dark corner forever. But she did not. She bent her head, and raised it again, and looked steadily into both our faces with those backward-searching eyes of hers. I will not say that she was Lukassa once more, because by then I had begun to know a bit better than that. Whoever she truly was, it was no one she had been born.

  “He fought so bravely,” she said to no one in the world. “He was so clever. His friend was clever, too, but too sure of himself, and frightened as well. They stood here, face to face, and they turned this room to the sun’s belly, to the ocean floor, to the frozen mouth of a demon. These walls boiled around them, the air cracked into knives, so many little, little knives—all there was to breathe was the little knives. And there was never any sound, not for a thousand years, because all the air had turned to knives. And the old one grew weary and sad, and he said Arshadin, Arshadin.” Even in that clear, quiet voice, the cry made me close my eyes.

  Lukassa went on. “But his friend would not heed, but only pressed him closer about with night and flame, and with such visions as made him feel his soul rotting away from him, poisoning the pale things that devoured it as he looked on. And then the old one became terrible with fear and sorrow and loneliness, and he struck back in such bitter thunder that his friend lost power over him for that moment, and was more frightened than he, and called upon the Others for aid. It is all here, in the stones, written everywhere.”

  I looked at the clawmarks, waiting for Lal to ask the question that came now. But she said nothing, and when I saw her face I saw the hope that I would be the one to speak. I also saw that she was immensely weary. It matters much to Lal to seem tireless, and never before had she let me see the legend frayed this thin. She cannot be that much older than I; yet I was young still when I heard my first tale of Lal-Alone. When did she last ask a favor of anyone, I wonder?

  “Last night you spoke to us of death,” I said. “Who died here, then, the old man or that one you call his friend?” Lukassa stared at me, shaking her head very slightly, as though my blindness had finally worn out her entire store of disbelief, anger, and pity, leaving her nothing but a kind of numb tolerance. The man we were seeking had often looked at me like that.

  “Oh, the friend died,” she said casually and wearily. “But he rose again.” It was I who gasped, I admit it—Lal made no sound, but leaned against the table for just a moment. Lukassa said, “The friend summoned the Others to help him, and they killed him, but he did not die. The old man—the old man fled away. His friend pursued him. I don’t know where.” She sat down very suddenly and put her head on her knees, and went to sleep.

  LISONJE

  Well, if you’d just mentioned the legs straight off. I told you, love, I never remember names, only my lines. And the odd historical event, like that child’s legs—such sweet long legs, practically touching the ground on either side of that funny little gray horse he rode into my life. It was one of those moments that you know right then, on the spot, will keep you company forever: me scrubbing yesterday’s makeup off my poor old face (well, I do thank you, most kind) at the rain barrel that stands near the woodshed—and suddenly those legs, just at the bottom edge of my washtowel. I kept raising the towel—like this, slowly, you see—and those dear legs just kept going on and on, all the way up to his shoulders. Nothing but bone and gristle, poor mite, as shaggy as his little horse, and not a handful of spare flesh between them. My own life, it seems to me so often, has been nothing but endless traveling in an endless circle, as far back as I can remember—which means practically the beginning of the world—but I took one good look at him and I knew that not all my silly miles together would amount to a fraction of the journey that boy had come. I do understand a few things besides playing, if I may say so, whatever you may have heard.

  Well, we looked at each other, and we looked at each other, and we might be standing there to this day if I hadn’t spoken. What I think is that they had just come to a stop in that inn-yard, the two of them, that neither he nor his horse had a step or a thought or a hope left in them—they were completely out of momentum, do you see, and that is quite the worst thing you can be short of, you may believe me. His eyes were alive, but they had no idea why—there was nothing in them but life, nothing at all. I’ve seen animals look like that, but never people. A sheltered existence, I daresay.

  What did I say? Oh, something completely absurd; I’d be ashamed to remember it. Something on the order of, “Know me next time, hey?” or, “Where I come from, staring at a person that long means you’ll have to get married.” Something that stupid, or worse—it doesn’t matter, because I wasn’t finished saying it when he simply toppled right off his horse’s back. Just began listing, as you might say, listing quietly to one side, and kept on listing and listing until he was on the ground. I managed to break his fall and to brace him up against the rain barrel and splash some water on his face. Nothing unusual about that—such of my time as hasn’t been spent on some road or other, rehearsing some play or other,
has gone on getting some man or other to sit up and wipe his mouth. Disgusting waste, when you let yourself think about it.

  Not that this one wasn’t a nice enough mouth, and a nice face, too. A country face, or it had been once—I was born on a farm myself, somewhere near Cape Dylee, they used to tell me. We moved on the next day, so I can’t be sure, of course. He opened dark country eyes after a bit, looking right into mine, and said, “Lukassa.” Perfectly calmly, quite as though he hadn’t just fainted from hunger and exhaustion. Real people are too much for me sometimes.

  Well, by now that was one name I knew as well as my own, and a good deal better than I wanted to, let me tell you. I am quite old enough to have no shame in saying that I have spent as many nights as the next fool listening to someone mumbling and crying someone else’s name until morning. But the choice was my own, ridiculous or not, and that is considerably different from being wakened every night, without exception, for almost two weeks, by that boy Rosseth tossing in the stall next to mine, crooning, “Nyateneri… Lukassa, sweet Lukassa… oh, Lal… oh, Lal … !” Discussing the matter with him had no more effect than kicking him awake—he still bounced up singing in the morning, while the rest of us came to look more and more as though we’d spent all night doing what he was dreaming about. There was talk of murder. I was opposed, but wavering.

  “Lukassa has ridden out with her friends,” I said. “They may return tonight, tomorrow, I have no idea. Sit there and I’ll bring you something to eat. Don’t move, stay right where you are—do you understand me?” Because I couldn’t be sure, do you see? I couldn’t be sure whether those unbearable dark eyes saw me at all. “Stay there,” I said, and then I ran to find Rosseth.

  He isn’t a bad lad, you know, apart from that obsession of his, which I’m sure he’s grown out of by now, if he’s alive. He went straightaway to filch some scraps of last night’s dinner (which was to be our dinner tonight—the Karsh system of feeding his stable guests), and even managed a cup of rather flat red ale. Meanwhile I appropriated some grain for the horse and a tunic from our wardrobe trunk: the one I wear myself in Lady Vigga’s Two Daughters, where I’m disguised as a man for half the play. We don’t do that one much anymore, unless someone requests it, so the front was practically clean, for a wonder.

  When I returned, Rosseth was already spooning soup into our long-legged waif, and a few of the company were lounging about asking questions. He paid none of them any heed, but spoke to me as soon as he saw me, saying, “Friends. How many?”

  “As many as you have,” I said, a bit shortly. I must be getting old, when an ordinary “thank you” begins to matter more to me than epic quests after some mislaid princess or other, even when the hero does have the most charming pair of legs for twenty years in any direction. “A black woman”—he was nodding impatiently—“and a tall brown creature, a warrior sort.” Petty of me, I suppose, but there was Rosseth already turning puppy-eyed at the mere thought of them, and now this one, and it was all suddenly irritating. Comes of playing this same story far too many times, doubtless. I said, “My name is Lisonje, and the person feeding you is Rosseth. Can you tell us your name?”

  “Tikat,” he said, and went to sleep again. Trygvalin, our juvenile, began giving him brandy, but I made him stop. He makes the stuff himself, and there are towns and entire provinces we can’t return to because of his openhandedness. I said to Rosseth, “He can stay in the loft with you. The landlord won’t know.”

  Rosseth just looked at me. He said, “Karsh always knows.” Tikat woke up and announced, “I am from—” and he named a place I couldn’t repeat to save myself. “I have come for Lukassa,” simple as that. All the time we were getting him into the stable, easing his clothes off— there were deep scratches and open sores all over his poor body, and some of those rags were stuck to him by his own caked blood—and washing him as well as we could, he kept saying it, “Tell Lukassa I have come for her.” He’d certainly come the long way around, that country child.

  Rosseth said, “We will have to tell Karsh.”

  “The boy has no money,” I said. “He hasn’t got anything but his horse and a bit of flesh. Do you think that will be enough for your master?” Time out of mind, we’ve played Corcorua and lodged in this same stable, and I still despise that slouching fat man. He’s no thief—which is absolutely the only reason we stay here—but his virtues end right there, as far as I know. There’s no imagination in him, no generosity, and certainly no charity. He’d give his best room to a family of scorpions—if they could pay—before he lodged one penniless wanderer under his leakiest outhouse roof. Everybody knows Karsh.

  “He needs another pair of hands just now,” Rosseth said. “We’ve three separate parties coming to market and likely to be with us for a week, maybe two. It will be more than Marinesha can handle alone, and I’ll be too busy myself to help her. If he can work, even a bit, I think I could talk to Karsh.”

  Tikat said, “I can work.” He tried to stand up, and very nearly made it. “But only until Lukassa comes back, because then we will go home together.” Simple and clear as that.

  Dardis came up to me then to grunt, “Run-through in five minutes,” and away out of range before I could get in amongst his ribs and tell him what I thought of that. Twenty years leading the company, playing the Wicked Lord Hassidanya at every crossroads between Grannach Harbor and the Durli Hills, and he’s still terrified of drying up in the last act, the way it happened that one time in Limsatty. Which means that we are condemned, if you please, to rehearse and rehearse that wretched old masque at every free moment, probably for the rest of our lives. Still, it did give me a decent excuse to stop sleeping with him—better Rosseth’s dreams, better horses breaking wind, than those lines in my ear in the middle of the night—and we’ve been much better friends ever since, I do believe. Odd, the way these matters work out.

  Rosseth pulled the tunic over Tikat’s head and nodded me away, saying, “Go on, it’s all right—I’ll let him rest awhile, and then we’ll go and see Karsh. It’s all right.” When I looked back from the stable door, the boy was sitting up, trying again to stand and getting tangled up in those blessed legs, like a newborn marsh-goat that already knows it has to walk right now or die. In my own experience, there’s not a soul in the world, male or female, worth that kind of devotion—but there, as I told you, all I know is my lines, so there you are.

  TIKAT

  When I woke I asked about the Rabbit, and the stable boy said that he had already bitten two horses and one actor, so I went back to sleep.

  The second time I woke alone to twilight and silence, except for the occasional stamp and whuffle below. The players, or whatever they were, had gone, and the boy, Rosseth, was whistling somewhere outside. I climbed down from the loft, going slowly, noticing in a far-off way that I was wearing a tunic too small for me, stiff with other peoples’ dried sweat. There was a dog, I remember—my head seemed to become huge as a cathedral, and then slowly small again, every time he barked. I saw the Rabbit in a stall near the door; he whinnied at me, but it was such a long way, and I could not reach him. I leaned against the door and said, “Good Rabbit. Good Rabbit.”

  From the stable door, the inn bulked larger than any building I had ever seen. Two chimneys, lights in every window, laughter and cooking smoke blowing down the night breeze that cooled my face and made my legs feel a little stronger. I started toward the inn because I thought Lukassa might be there.

  Rosseth found me under a tree next to the hog pen. I had been sick, I think, but I had not fainted again—I knew as well who and where I was as I understood that it would be better for me to stay on all fours for a little while longer. He crouched beside me, saying, “Tikat. I’ve been past this place twice, looking for you. Why didn’t you call out?”

  When I did not answer, he put his hands under me and began trying to lift me to my feet. I pushed him away, harder than I meant to, perhaps, and he sat back on his heels and stared at me without speaking for
a long time. He was a year or two younger than I, and built very much like the Rabbit: short-legged and thick through the chest, with shaggy red-gold hair, a wide mouth, and quick dark eyes. A kind, curious, irritating face, I thought it then. I said, “I don’t need any help.”

  Rosseth grinned at me, unoffended, unmalicious. “Then you and Karsh should get along wonderfully well. He doesn’t give it. Come,” and he held out his hand.

  “I don’t need your Karsh,” I said. “I need Lukassa and my horse, nothing more.” I got to my knees then, and we faced each other like that, while the hogs grunted in the deepening dark, muzzles pushing between the raw fence posts, trying to reach the place where I had vomited.

  “Lukassa has not returned,” Rosseth answered, “nor have her friends. As for what you need and don’t need, believe me, the only thing that matters right now is Karsh’s permission to sleep here and eat here while you recover. Come on, Tikat.” Suddenly he looked his age, and very anxious with it.

  I stood up without his aid, but my legs buckled under me at the third step. Rosseth caught me, but I was growing very tired of being picked up and patted and set down somewhere else, like a baby, and I shook him away again. “I can crawl,” I said. “I have crawled before.”

  Rosseth blew out his breath, exactly the way the Rabbit does when he is displeased with me. Then he took hold of me and dragged me upright once more, would I or would I not. Stronger than they looked, those small, broken-nailed hands. He said in my ear, “I am not doing this for you, but for Lukassa. You are her friend, so I must help you until she comes back. After that, you can put your bloody pride where it belongs. Come on. You can either lean on me or I’ll just keep picking you up. Come on.” I felt him chuckle, setting his shoulder under mine. “You and Karsh,” he said. “I can hardly wait.”