Innkeeper's Song

by Peter S. Beagle

  “Rosseth, we do not need you.” Lal’s voice was sharp, even harsh, almost as much so as I could have wished. “Go with your master, Rosseth.” He turned away from her and flung toward me, marching so blindly that he would have blundered right into me if I hadn’t stepped aside. I looked back at the women—they were not looking at us, but drawing together over those dead bodies like so many ravens—and then I walked behind the boy back to the inn. For the first time in a very long while, I followed him.

  LAL

  Good or ill, it might all have been avoided if I hadn’t already been drinking. I drink very seldom—it is one of the many pleasant habits that my life has never been able to afford—but then I drink with a purpose. You will say that I should have been rejoicing: that this day had not only set Nyateneri and me squarely back on the track of the one I called my friend and she the Man Who Laughs, but also offered us at least some part of a vision of some part of his fate. True enough, and a meaningless, useless kind of truth it seemed, that evening long ago in a little low room smelling of Karsh’s life, Nyateneri’s fox, and the dozen pigeons Karsh kept in the attic directly above. What good to know that our dear magician had lived near Corcorua in a ridiculous pastry tower, and had been betrayed by a beloved companion—himself in turn slain by demons of some sort—when there was no imagining how long ago this had all happened, or where in this world he might have fled? Lukassa could tell us no more than that terrible chamber had told her; for the rest, the trail was even colder than it had been when we set out in the morning. My friend would have to come to us now—there was truly no going to him.

  For my part, I was weary from my skin inwards, angry with everything from my skin on out, and capable neither of thought nor of sleep. So I had Karsh send up what he complained were his last three bottles of Dragon’s Daughter—the southernmost wine in his cellar, so red that it is almost black—and I was decently into the second when word came that I was wanted at the bathhouse. I brought the bottle with me, for company’s sake. Lukassa followed.

  When I drink too much—and I only drink too much, as I have said—I most often become sullen, brooding and resentful. Perhaps this is my true nature, and all else of me a mask, who knows? I said no word to Nyateneri—no questions, no reproaches, nothing—while the three of us were burying the two bodies in a wild tickberry patch, a tedious distance from the bathhouse. It was work we both knew, and best done mum in any case. I finished the second bottle then, without offering it round. Nyateneri said something in her own tongue over the graves, and we walked back to the inn with her looking sideways at me on my left and Lukassa sneaking glances on my right. And I said nothing at all until we were in our room with the last wine bottle open before me. I am like that, to this day. It is why I prefer to travel alone.

  Then, finally, I rounded on her, on Nyateneri. I am not proud of much that I said, and there is no reason to recount every word. The main of it was that she had deceived Lukassa and me: she had endangered our lives from the moment we met, saying that no one pursued her and all the while knowing that those two killers were drawing nearer as she lied to us. When she defended herself, pointing out that she had said only that no one anywhere wanted her back, never that she was not wanted dead—oh, then I lost language completely and came around the table reaching for her. Which was certainly foolish—hurt and tired or not, she was still stronger than I—but she swiftly put the bed between us, holding up her hands for peace. In the attic the pigeons woke up and began gurgling and flapping, making chilly dust filter down between the rafters.

  “What does it matter? They came to kill me, and I killed them—you never even saw them until they were dead. What danger, what smallest inconvenience for you? What night’s sleep did it all ever cost you? It was my business, mine to deal with, and I did, and it is done. It is done, finished, no harm to anyone but me. Tell me differently, Lal-after-dark.”

  “Is it?” I screamed at her. “Two little deaths and all well—is it always finished so easily for you, with no—” I was still dribbling words—“no echoes? Tell Rosseth, whom they almost strangled—tell her.” Between the tower, and the encounter with Tikat, and then helping to bury Nyateneri’s victims, poor Lukassa had endured the hardest day of us all; small blame to her if she had now gone to huddle in a corner, whining wordlessly to the fox and twisting an end of her hair. I’d have done likewise, but for the wine.

  Nyateneri turned to look long and thoughtfully at Lukassa, who looked back quickly, and then away. “Indeed I will,” she said. “And then perhaps she will tell me what it is like to be dead, and then to be raised into life again, and even possibly why it was never mentioned to me that I was traveling with a wizard and a walking corpse, who were in turn being followed by a mad farmboy. The matter might have been brought up, surely? At some well-chosen point?” Her voice remained as pleasantly ironic as ever, but it shook very slightly as she stared at me. Furious as I was, I would not have charged her again.

  “That was our business,” I answered. “None of it put you in peril, as your secrets did us. I would have told you if it were otherwise.”

  Nyateneri’s laugh was high and contemptuous. “There was only one wizard whose word I ever took for anything.” Her left hand was swelling badly: she had used it without complaint as we dug the graves, but the slightest gesture obviously hurt her now. She went on loudly:

  “And even he never tried to raise the dead. He said there was no way of doing that that was not wrong in its nature, and the greatest of mages could not make it right. So there’s no need to tax yourself persuading me that you learned the art from him. I knew him better than that.”

  “The devil you do!” I shouted, and it was not until I saw her blink uncomprehendingly that I realized I had fallen—and a long, long fall it was—back into my oldest childhood tongue, the secret speech of an inbarati of Khaidun. That may not tell you how angry I was, and how drunk, but it tells me. I was trembling myself, from the shock of that sound, as I repeated the words in common speech, carefully. I said, “If you knew him as well as you say, then you ought to remember how much he loved gardening, and how dreadful he was at it. His melons were like fists, his greens crackled like parchment—his corn came up withered, and his beans never came up at all. He couldn’t have grown so much as a potato without the aid of magic.”

  Nyateneri was staring at me, shaking her head, looking half-drunk herself with weariness and amazement. “That?” she said. “That? You did it with that old garden rhyme of his? I don’t believe it.” But she was beginning to laugh, in a different way this time, a kind of deep, boiling giggle. “Oh, I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it. You raised her like a squash, like a—” but the giggle took over then, and she collapsed onto the bed beside Lukassa, pounding her thigh with her unhurt hand and hooting helplessly. The fox’s cold laughter joined hers.

  Lukassa looked offended at first, but Nyateneri’s laughter swept everything before it until we were all three rocking and yapping like the fox, who bounced between us, nipping painfully at chins and noses. I slapped him off the bed, and he promptly sprang to the table and stood there listening to the pigeons overhead, plainly counting them with his pricked ears. Why did Karsh keep those birds, I still wonder, and to whom in this world would Karsh send messages? I certainly never found out.

  The laughter dissolved the clawing ball of fury that had been turning in my stomach all that day—longer, perhaps. Lukassa in particular clung to her mirth like a child to the last moments of a holiday; as well she might, who hadn’t laughed twice since her return to this life. Nyateneri kept asking her about that, still chuckling but without mockery: “What was it like to be a squash, a head of cabbage? What did it feel like?” Lukassa finally answered her, speaking in a voice that I would give more than I can tell you to forget.

  “I was never that,” she said, quite gently. “A vegetable has no notion of what is happening to it, but I always knew. When I was in the river, I was Lukassa dying, and when I was dead I was still
Lukassa, still, still.” And so she had been, for no reason I understand yet: crying her death with such hunger, such outrage, that it changed my road, and next my journey, and at last my life. She continued, “And when I rose to moonlight through the water and stood before Lal, I was Lukassa there, too, only”—the voice faltered then—“only not so much. Different. Some Lukassa was left among the stones of the river, and I cannot go back to find her. And if I could, she would not come to me, because she has no name now, so no one can call her.” She stopped then, and not even the fox could meet her eyes.

  When I felt the tears begin, I did not know what they were. It had been that long since the last time I wept. I thought first that I was sick from the wine, and then that I might be having a taking, a fit, for the muscles of my face and throat and stomach took themselves away from me, though I fought them so hard that I could not breathe. My own body, turned treacherous as Bismaya, effortlessly cruel as men. I heard a strange, light voice, a child’s voice, saying something very far away, and then the tears came in full and I gave in, gave in, I who never gave in, not to any of them, not in my heart, never, and they all knew it, every one, always. Until that moment, no one living had seen me cry, except for my friend, if he indeed lived.

  I have cried since, but only once, and that time for joy, and it has no place in this tale.

  How they gaped at me, Nyateneri and Lukassa as well. I was doubled over, almost retching with sorrow—and, yes, some of that was undoubtedly the wine, but there was more. You see, absolutely all that I have of my beginnings is my name, Lalkhamsin-khamsolal, and to have lost that, to have your soul not answer to its name—oh, do you see, I could just imagine that, but for me even the imagining was beyond dealing with, beyond fighting or enduring or turning into a story. And there she was, that village goose, staring down at me in vague wonder while I wept and wept for her loss and her courage, and for myself, for my friend, for Khaidun where I was born. It had been that long.

  Nyateneri finally put her arms around me, which quieted me immediately. She was stiff at it; and, in honesty, I am not easy being held, not by most people. I moved a little from her, wiping my face and eyes. Nyateneri turned away then, and busied herself refilling my winemug. She sipped, gasped, shivered slightly, and said, “I think we are going to need some more of this appalling swill.”

  “No more left,” I snuffled. “Karsh said.” I cried a little more at the thought.

  “Karsh misunderstood,” Nyateneri said. She swung herself off the bed and was gone in what seemed the same movement, already calling for the innkeeper as she clattered down the stair. Lukassa and I sat silent, shyer than strangers, while I cleaned myself up as well as I might. When I could speak again, I said finally, “Lukassa, there is only one person who can call back Lukassa, the one there in the river, under the stones. That person is Tikat.”

  Lukassa shuddered. I could feel it where we sat, as though the earth had shuddered beneath both of us. She would not look at me. I said, “There is no other. If you want her back, that part of yourself, you must go to him.”

  “I will not. I will not.” I could barely hear her, so low she spoke. She clenched her hands on the bedframe, looking down at her knees pressed tightly together. “Let me alone. I will not.”

  “He loves you,” I said. “Little as I know of love, I know that much past doubting.” But she shook her head so that I heard the very gristle of her neck crack, crying to me, “Lal, no, let be, I cannot bear this.” She called me by my name rarely, and Nyateneri not at all. I touched her to comfort her—as clumsily as Nyateneri had me—but she pushed my hand away and sat still until we heard booted feet on the stair again. Then she turned to face me, paler than ever, but seeing me out of dry, steady eyes.

  “I do not know if I want her back,” she said. “That Lukassa.” Then Nyateneri had pushed the door open with her foot and was inside with her arms full of bottles of Dragon’s Daughter. She was smiling savagely—I half-expected to see bits of Karsh’s habitual dirty smock stuck between her teeth. She said, “A simple misunderstanding. I knew it would turn out so, once I explained the situation.”

  Perhaps it was the effects of exhaustion, reaction to her fight for life, or perhaps I am simply as vain as I’ve always suspected, but Nyateneri had a weaker head than I that night. No more wincing, no grimaces: she drank straight from the bottle like any common soldier, and it took distinctly less than one bottle before she began to tell us about the convent she had fled. I was right about that, after all, if about precious little else.

  “It’s deep in the west country,” she said. “No, you don’t know it, Lal, it’s not anywhere near any place you could know, as much journeying as you’ve done. The closest town is Sumildene, and it’s not close at all, and no one goes there who doesn’t have to.” Which is true enough, as I know, having been once to Sumildene, but there was no reason to go into that. Nyateneri said, “West and south of Sumildene, the land turns boggy, no good for anything but tilgit farmers, and not many of those.” She grinned at our stares. “Tilgit? It’s a kind of marsh weed: you dry it out and pound it forever and it makes a perfectly disgusting porridge that seems to keep people alive until they’d rather die than eat any more of the stuff. Oh, we did look forward to fast-days at the convent. I’d have run away for that reason alone.”

  “What is it called,” I asked, “that place?” Nyateneri spread her hands and smiled apologetically. I asked then, “How long did you live there?”

  “Twenty-one years,” Nyateneri said quietly. “From the time I was nine years old.” She answered my next question before I voiced it. “Eleven years. I have been fleeing them for eleven years.”

  Lukassa sipped her wine, wrinkling her nose and mouth into a dainty sneeze. She said, “I don’t understand. What kind of a convent could that be?”

  Nyateneri did not answer. I said, “A convent that forbids its sisters ever to break their vows. There are such.” The fox had come down from the table and curled in a corner, bright eyes glittering under drowsy lids. I continued: “But I have never heard of a convent that would pursue a recusant for eleven years, let alone set assassins after her.” When Nyateneri opened a second bottle without looking at me, a mischief took me to add, “I must say, I don’t think much of trackers who take that long a time to run down their quarry. I’d have found you in two years, at most, and I know those who would have done it within one.”

  It was purest bait, of course, and Nyateneri must have known it for bait immediately. In any event, she took a great soldier’s swig, set the bottle down so that the wine jumped from the neck, and said to the walls, “The first ones caught me in less time than that. The convent breeds none but the best.”

  That left me breathless and speechless, I confess it. Nyateneri was well into the second bottle before I was able to ask, “The first ones? There were—there have been others?”

  Nyateneri’s smile this time, made her look old. “Two other teams. They hunt in teams, and there is no losing them. You have to kill them.” The smile clenched on me, exactly as I had imagined it gripping fat Karsh. Nyateneri said, “By and by, more swiftly than you’d think, the word gets back to the convent, and then a new team comes after you. I am the first ever to survive three such hunts. They will be displeased.”

  It took Lukassa to speak again, after a long silence, to ask the question that I was too profoundly bewildered to ask. She said, “Why? Why must they kill everyone who leaves them? They wouldn’t do that if they knew what it was to be dead.” There was an unpitying gentleness about her voice that was strangely terrible to hear. I can hear it still.

  Nyateneri put her unhurt hand on Lukassa’s hand. She did not squeeze at all, or stroke it; only left it there for a little moment. “I rather think they do know,” she said, “more than most, anyway. They have too much knowledge at that place, too many secrets, and that is what may not leave.” Lukassa drew breath for another question, but Nyateneri forestalled it, laughing and mimicking her, not unkindly, in a c
hild’s eager voice. “ ‘What secrets, what knowledge?’ Oh, they are grand and foul secrets, Lukassa, dreadful secrets, secrets of kings, queens, priests, generals, judges, ministers: secrets that would shake down temples here, an empire there, start this war, end that, compel her to flee her crown, him to slay himself, them to destroy a nation in order to keep one pitiful truth hidden. Stupid secrets, stupid secrets.”

  She slapped the other hand down on the table: not hard, but hard enough so that her lips flattened and her face lost a half-shade of color. I said, “Let me see that,” but she held the hand out away from me and went on talking, her voice not less but more even than before. “The convent is very old. I do not know how old. The people there are of all kinds, some old, some quite young, as I was. The one thing they have in common is that they all bring their secrets with them. You must, everyone must have at least one secret to tell, or you cannot be admitted.”

  “You were nine years old,” I said. I held her eyes with mine while I reached for her hand again. The back and the beginning of the wrist felt cushiony with heat, but my fingertips could find nothing broken. Nyateneri closed her eyes. “I had secrets enough for them. They were happy to take me in, and I—I was content there, I was, for a long time. I grew strong there. I learned a great deal. Pour me some more wine or give me my hand back. What garden spell are you working now?”

  “No magic—only something I’ve seen done in the South Islands to fool pain. At times I can do it. They taught you much about pain in the convent, didn’t they?”

  Nyateneri emptied her mug in two gulps. She said, “I knew somewhat already,” and then nothing for a long time while she drank and I drank, and I worked on her hand. Lukassa sat on the bed and watched us both, slipping some of her wine to the fox when she thought I wasn’t looking. The tree hisses at the window; outside on the landing, slow feet tramp by, a heavy voice grumbles a sea-song—the sailor on his way to bed. Further off, next room but one, the holy man and woman are chanting in quiet antiphony. I know the prayer, a little.