Magic in Ithkar 3

by Andre Norton

  “With all your powers,” asked Vassilika, “why do you need us?”

  “Because our flesh isn’t fit!” Taryn Rhyn Eryn cried sharply.

  The light flared. When Vassilika could see more than orange spots with a blue afterglow, she saw Rhyn Eryn’s true form: blazing-eyed, erect, but deformed—more deformed, perhaps, than the thing he had punished.

  “How long . . .”

  “Have we looked this way? Since we of the crew knew how our own ship failed. We stole a life slip”—Vassilika heard the words as gibberish—“and abandoned our officers. Some say we also abandoned our souls.”

  Vassilika had read of a betrayal once, in one of the oldest and least canonical scrolls about the Three Lordly Ones. These creatures must be incredibly old, of an unimaginable heritage, that they claimed kinship with the Lordly Ones.

  “Some of us say we cannot die, that we left our souls . . . but oh, our bodies die and die and die. Still, some of us are cursed with the power to sing. Almost to sing true. What you see is the illusion we can sing to comfort ourselves.” Once again light exploded, and Taryn Rhyn Eryn stood tall, dusky, and magnificent before her. She shivered at the sight and scent of him. “Whatever else you see is our poor best at dream-singing when our bodies are too old to contain us and we must move to others. Each body is less fit, less beautiful. . . . We weaken.

  “And so we tried this. My plan. To find a dream-singer who might help us sing true. We had not dreamed we would find three.”

  “We are not dream-singers, Demetria and I.”

  “The power gilds you like a second skin. And while you are here, he will cooperate.”

  Vassilika glanced at Andriu, now nuzzling Corisande’s white throat. He appeared to be cooperating indeed.

  “Your decision to spare my crew was unpopular,” she observed. “Why would your people want them?”

  “There are other ways to obtain bodies besides singing them: make them, breed them. Or take them . . . as we took the trader who tempted you with metal from the life slip. Your crew are strong, healthy . . .” Aye, and they’d leap into hell first! Vassilika thought. As would I, before I breed strong bodies for a set of deformed cowards and deserters. Being used once was enough for a lifetime!

  “You should not despise me,” said Rhyn Eryn.

  “Why not?” Vassilika asked.

  “Because I don’t want you to.” He smiled at her with the assurance of a selfish child caught in mischief, yet sure its charm can evade punishment. “I can take your mind, change it for you. I can compel the illusion that you turn to me as your husband now turns to her—” He nodded over at Andriu, now enlaced in the woman’s arms. “It could be very, very good. But I would prefer that you turned to me of your own will. I am lonely.”

  Vassilika shook her head. So Taryn Rhyn Eryn was human to that extent. He wanted love, acceptance, forgetfulness that his treacherous brain was prisoned in deformity her mind and body must be enslaved to overcome. Even if it cost her life, her family, and her crew, she could not consent to help him.

  “I am sorry,” Rhyn Eryn said. He raised his head. His eyes widened, their pupils glowing, drawing her attention. . . .

  “A moment, please. One last time, I should like to hear my husband play with my mind unclouded.”

  A cup was placed at Andriu’s lips, and he drank. He remembered as the fire burned down into his belly. Vassilika had just given him a chance, and he had to make the best of it.

  He laid hands on the woman who wore a simulacrum of Corisande Storm-lover’s legendary flesh. Her shoulders were too cool to be human; his gift as a dream-singer told him that their shapeliness was a lie. He made himself kiss her in a way she would interpret as a pledge of later passion, then picked up the harp. . . . He thought it hadn’t been there an instant earlier. More of their work, he supposed.

  He clucked his tongue in disapproval. One string was broken. As he bent to repair it, the Corisande-shape left his side. With a hunching gait, it crossed to the tall man (man?) whose hand lay so possessively on his Vassilika’s shoulder.

  “Giving his mind back like that was madness. Do you know what he might do with a dream-singer’s full powers? Do you?”

  The hall lord ignored her. His mouth brushed Vassilika’s hair as he asked, “Will this content you?”

  Andriu saw her nod. He would have given much to hear her voice, but she had done what she could.

  He stretched the string to its proper peg, then examined the broken one more closely. Glints of red among the silver of string and inlay . . . why had he never noted those flecks of reddish harvest light before? He teased one free with sensitive, callus-padded fingers and stared at it until he heard how the muttering rose to a snarl in the hall around him.

  Vassilika’s hair. Strands of Vassilika’s hair had been woven around the strings. The hair caressed his fingers as he began his song.

  He sang of spring, of birth, of his daughter’s first cry, first step, first words. Her babbling ceased as she, too, listened. A drop of water fell from the ceiling.

  Andriu sang of summer, hot and sultry, full of longings and vibrant health, of blue sky, storms lancing down through it.

  Rhyn Eryn’s hand turned up Vassilika’s face. “Ah, I remember,” he said.

  He sang of hearths and harvest, wind brushing grain into waves in the field; of a line of maidens—each looking like Vassilika—each bearing a sheaf of wheat, dancing about a fire

  Three more drops of water sprinkled on the fire.

  Taryn Rhyn Eryn raised his face and gestured. Around Andriu, the air went thick and drowsy. He felt a surge of longing for the dark woman who wore veils of mist and twilight, who awaited him in the bowers spread beyond this room.

  “No!” He could hear outcries rise among the Vodyanoi. They screamed to Taryn Rhyn Eryn to shut up the mad harper, kill him, anything, but he merely stroked Vassilika’s hair. Vassilika twisted in his arms. Now Andriu could see her face. Go on, she mouthed. Go on!

  The drops of water had become a trickle.

  I have killed us all, he thought. The ceiling would cave in, and the water would crush them before anyone had a chance even to try the route Vassilika had discovered. He knew well that she would never abandon him and Demetria.

  Andriu felt a tug on his robe. He turned a smile down at his daughter, who hugged his leg. This was the best gift he could make her: she would die free, pawn to no evil creatures.

  He struck the harp to sing of winter. Vibrations quivered through table, floor, and the air itself.

  Rhyn Eryn turned toward him, his eyes insane, his mouth gaping to sing discords, yelps and howls broken by the cleft in his palate, which was revealed now as his power waned. Andriu struck the harp again.

  I can hold him, he thought. I can. It was a stalemate. Their opposed powers struggled in the hall. The floor began to crack, the cracks to gape open. A one-legged servant stumbled, then toppled with a shriek into one of the cracks.

  “Not my child!” Vassilika’s voice rose in a wail. “Don’t let her drown, too . . . I beg you!”

  Rhyn Eryn’s hands, outstretched for the next attack, trembled. He turned to look at her, and his twisted mouth twisted still further—with regret. Almost negligently, he gestured at the ceiling.

  Drowning out her cry and the clash of Andriu’s music against Rhyn Eryn’s came a rumble, as of stone crashing in on itself, and a sense of engulfing wetness. The hall was breaking up. Andriu had time to stretch out his hand to his wife and feel her take it before water hurled him upward and darkness struck him on the back of the neck.

  Rough hands threw Andriu over the rail. His belly crashed into it, and he collapsed onto the deck, trying to heave up what felt like half the river. The sky whirled about him as he hacked and panted. For a second, he wondered if he still had the lung fever—and that Vassilika, his daughter, his fortune, even the Vodyanoi and their doomed, damned hall, were fever dreams and that he now lay in some tavern waiting for delirium and death.

  B
eside him, Vassilika was coughing, too. Andriu looked up and saw his wife and daughter lying beside him on the deck. Demetria was wailing fretfully, but her hair and clothes were completely dry.

  “He couldn’t kill her,” Vassilika gasped. She coughed up more water. “Taryn. He couldn’t let her drown. He diverted . . . I suppose we might as well call it power, to protect her . . . and so the water came down upon them.”

  Andriu staggered to the rail. Yes, surely, a bite had fallen from the coastline. Strange debris littered the water, wreckage he didn’t want to examine too closely lest he see bodies, the grotesque, drowned corpses of the Vodyanoi, floating among it. He didn’t want to think of them. He didn’t want to think of Father Demetrios trying to make one of them manifest.

  Vassilika joined him. Her arm went about his waist, his about her shoulders, as they so often stood. “You couldn’t pay me to salvage that,” she said.

  “The crew will be happy.” He glanced around the boat. The usually neat rope coils lay strewn over the deck. Two barrels were splintered, contents every place. Even the mast listed to one side. “Must have been quite a whirlpool up here, after the hall collapsed. They’ll have enough to do without dragging the river.”

  He heard the steersman shouting orders and was glad when they started to move. He didn’t want to stay here for the night, floating over so many broken bodies. He didn’t want to remember what they had looked like when their illusions failed, or the hunger and guilt that drove them. Yet one of them had held the essence of a creature who had sacrificed his own life for Andriu’s daughter—and had known what he was doing.

  This would make quite a song, he thought. A pity his harp was probably snagged on some rock down there. Vassilika shivered against him. “Someone get her a blanket,” he shouted. He remembered with a pan of shame that she had been naked when she’d entered the cave. But she was not naked now, though the dawnsilk that dripped and clung to her body offered little warmth or concealment. She saw the way he looked at her and flushed. He took the blanket from the crewman who brought it and wrapped her in the warm wool and his arms. As he swung her about, she brought up one hand. Starlight glittered off the inlay of his battered harp and off the faint threads of red that clung still to its snapped strings.

  “This came with us, too,” she told him.

  The Singing Eggs

  Kiel Stuart

  The road to Ithkar Fair was almost empty, the day swift, clear, bright. Master portrait painter Maeve drove her wagon lazily in the sun, eyes half-closed. But something was amiss. An irregularity in motion. She opened her eyes fully, and sure enough, Cloudblue was limping.

  “This won’t do,” she said, stopping the wagon, clambering down, and hugging his dappled neck. He had been a gift from her greatest patron, Lord Piellao. (But that was five years gone, when things had been going well and she’d had more work than she could handle.)

  Maeve bent to her task, carefully lifting and examining each hoof. Aha! A pebble, lodged in the right front. She drew out her small artist’s knife, chatting reassurance to the horse, and expertly pried out the pebble.

  “There, my friend,” she said. “We’ll rest here a minute.” One thing about animals, she thought. Their loyalties do not teeter with your latest success. Or failure. Nor even with the ‘doubts you hold about yourself. . . .

  Suddenly Maeve let out a yelp. In the back end of her wagon she spied a bright-eyed little beast, its pointed muzzle dripping egg. Her eggs! The eggs she needed to bind pigments, her livelihood—

  Maeve snatched out her knife again and tensed. The little beast, loudly crunching through eggshell after eggshell, stared at her, direct, unafraid.

  It was a pretty thing, with its short glossy fur, explosion of white whiskers, and vermilion eyes like twin jewels in multicolored velvet. Its busy black nose and paws were in constant motion as it gobbled her eggs.

  Maeve sighed, put away her knife, and watched it finish its gluttonous feast. It chirped, sneezed, washed itself vigorously, then jumped out of the wagon, where Maeve saw it streak off into the trees. “Shoo,” she said halfheartedly, and went to examine the egg basket.

  Not a one remained. Ah, well. Eggs could hardly be difficult to come by at the fair. She examined her unharmed panels, brushes, and pigments as she considered using the lost eggs as an excuse to turn back, not go to the fair at all. No. It must be. She had to test herself, had to resist her fears.

  She patted Cloudblue and got back in the wagon.

  “Walk slowly, friend,” she cautioned him, and once more they ambled down the dust-brown road to the fair.

  Very soon, Maeve realized that they were being followed. A dirty, ragged, scrawny little figure was walking in their wake, carrying a bundle that bumped against its leg rhythmically. Cloudblue’s ears flicked back, catching the sound. Maeve clucked for him to stop, and their little shadow stopped, too. It was a child—a small boy.

  She called to him, and the child stood scuffing in the dirt, twisting and turning, then slowly came alongside the wagon. “Why do you follow us, child?”

  The boy shrugged, then stood on tiptoe to peer into Maeve’s wagon. He turned his dirty face up to Maeve’s. “You are a painting master, sir? You are on your way to the fair?”

  Maeve laughed, a big bright sound. “Fie! I am indeed a painting master, but no ‘sir.’ I am called Maeve.” She flicked at the buttons on her coat.

  “But you are in man’s clothing,” said the child.

  “Something 1 picked up from a patron, who became my greatest friend and benefactor. He is gone now, but his style remains part of me.”

  “Let me go into the fair with you?”

  Maeve was silent.

  “Please?” Suddenly the dirty face brightened. “I know! I see no apprentice with you. Perhaps you could use an apprentice.”

  Maeve frowned. “I had one. He did not—suit me, and I was forced to release him.” She did not say more about her unfortunate association with Gahr, the misbegotten son of that errant, devious, masquerading wizard Gohnd.

  “Let me be your apprentice, then! I can do more than care for your horse! Just tell me what to do! Please?”

  “Child,” said Maeve, “it takes seven full years’ study to become a skilled apprentice. And I am a stern master. I demand that my gesso panels be of the finest wood, well and properly aged, and that the gesso comes out smooth as unicorn ivory. My pigments must be ground until they are like liquid gold—and then they must be ground some more. You propose to hop into my wagon and do these things well, if I take you to Ithkar Fair?” Maeve arched her strong eyebrows at the lad.

  The child seemed to melt a little. His head drooped, the grubby hands fell away from the wagon, and he turned to shuffle off.

  “Well,” said Maeve, biting a knuckle. She drew a breath. “Still,” she said, then, “you look to be an able and smart youth.” She beckoned to him. “Climb up. Come.”

  The child whooped and flung himself into the wagon.

  Maeve stifled a smile and clucked to Cloudblue. “Now, son,” she said as the wagon creaked into motion, “you must apply yourself carefully to do all I shall show you. But soon you will— What’s amiss?”

  The child wiped filthy paws across an equally filthy face. “I may be an apprentice—but no ‘son.’ “ The child blinked at Maeve.

  “Ah.” She laughed. “But you are in boy’s attire. So I am caught by my own device! Well met! Let that be our trademark. But,” she went on, chuckling, “if you are going to go around in boy’s attire, we can surely find some better garments at the fair. As befits the apprentice of a great master. What are you called? Where are your parents?”

  “My name is Tuilla. I came down from the north.” “Ah,” said Maeve. “That explains much.”

  “My parents are gone. The rest of my people don’t need my small help,” she said a little defiantly, trying to wipe some of the encrustation from her face with her grubby shirt. She only succeeded in smearing it around, rearranging what was already
there.

  Maeve pulled out a linen square. She passed it over the girl’s face, glancing playfully at the dirt. “Not the best red clay. We will not bother to collect it, for I already have a supply of good southern earth in a flask. Here, take the cloth and this skin of water. See what you can do.”

  While Tuilla removed the worst of the road from her face, Maeve said, “I can guess, I think. You wanted a trade, and there were no opportunities with your own people. The fair teems with opportunity, so you took to the road, hoping to find a way in.” Maeve thought of the sullen, spoiled, overprivileged Gahr and glanced at eager, hopeful Tuilla. “Yes, well,” she said briskly. “I have some bread and dried fruit in that reed basket there. Eat. A great master’s apprentice should look well fed. It helps the image.”

  Fees had been paid, clothes bought, and Tuilla cleaned up thoroughly. Now Maeve watched her new, smart-looking apprentice care for Cloudblue with a skilled hand. The girl had obviously been around horses. On that much, at least, she could set her mind at ease.

  There remained the matter of some eggs.

  Maeve scanned the teeming fairgrounds. Should she try the livestock dealers or booths where food was sold? Livestock dealers would have fresher eggs. She slipped a hand into her coat, weighing her purse. If she could meet the challenge, this fair would bring new patrons and fill her purse.

  “Tuilla,” she said, “I am going now to buy eggs. While I am gone, you can set up.”

  A hooded, cloaked figure came up behind her and touched her arm. She turned and looked into a painted face. “I will return soon,” she said to Tuilla.

  The painted mouth moved in a grin, and the man said softly, “I understand you seek eggs. Why spoil your pretty coat mucking around livestock, master? If you will walk with me, I can solve your problems.”

  “Problems.” Plural. And the face . . . painted, but so hauntingly familiar. A fair-ward she knew by sight, Marus, nodded at them, and Painted Face turned away, looking down, and said, “Let us walk away from here.”