The Tale of the Five Omnibus

by Diane Duane

  The place was astir. Hasmë is the main southern town for river traffic, home to many of the big broad-bottomed flatboats which are the only craft able to navigate the Arlid all the way north to the Sea. As Lorn came clanking up the south road, in a crowd of travelers and other traders, he looked off toward the “mooring roads”, the extensive river- shallows just east of the river and west of the road, and was astonished to see how many of the boats were there, all riding light. Lorn suspected he knew why. Someone had ordered them held here for later use. As troop carriers? To bind together and make bridges of, where fords won’t serve? But Lorn suspected that the traders who ran the boats weren’t happy, no matter what money they had been given to keep them content.

  The main gates of the town faced the river docks, and a paved causeway ran down from where the road met the gates, to the docks themselves. That road was full of people in Arlene livery, hurrying in all directions, escorting or pulling a great press of loaded carts and wagons, leading horses down to the boats, loading them and the contents of the carts with the predictable stir and confusion. Everybody around him was staring, so Lorn felt no selfconsciousness about staring too. A lot of cavalry, he thought. Not in as good shape as they might be, from the look of things—some of these are plainly farmhorses. And how many of the others are first-timers, I wonder? For no cavalry charge against massed troops would work without a good number of front-line horses who had never done a charge before, and didn’t have the sense to be frightened of it. Seasoned war-horses knew better, and couldn’t be used for such.

  He turned his attention back to the gates. They were big wooden ones, guarded by more Arlene mercenaries, and Lorn glanced at them with what he hoped looked like utter boredom as he rode in.

  Nothing easier than getting in, Lorn thought as he passed them. I hope getting out is as simple. He turned leftward and rode on along with numerous of the crowd, heading for the marketplace. There were a lot more people wearing the Arlene livery, in various forms, sometimes just the White Lion stitched onto a tied-on armband or a tunic of some other color than the usual black. Mercenaries from Steldin, mostly, to judge by the darker skin and hair of the men and women he saw. To them, this is just another fight; the question of royalty, of right and wrong sides, doesn’t particularly matter….

  He sighed a bit as he came into the marketplace, and started looking around for a place to set up. Hasmë market had a permanent market-house in the middle of it, stone-built, and almost a thousand years old; the slabs under that vaulted roof were worn concave by the centuries of use. But the market-house was already full of butchers and fishmongers. Lorn found himself an empty spot over by the south wall, near a clothseller’s booth, and started undoing Pebble’s packs.

  He had hardly more than half his stock laid out when a voice from behind him said, “You have anything bigger than that one?”

  Lorn turned, still half bent over, and so had a moment to compose himself at the sight of the black tunic, before he straightened up. The serjeant was a big blond man, possibly North Arlene if his accent was anything to go by, and his tunic was regulation, the embroidery of the Lion on it old and well cared for. A regular, Lorn thought, and started sweating, and wiped his face as he straightened. There was reason enough for it: it was hot today. “Just one,” he said. “It’s second-hand, though.”

  “Oh? Let’s see the mend.”

  Lorn reached around Pebble and unlatched the pot from the hook it hung by. The sergeant took it, upended the pot, looked thoughtful, then upended it again and checked the inside. “Looks tight. I’ll give you eight for the whole lot.”

  Lorn put his eyebrows up. “It’s worth at least ten, piece by piece.”

  “Would you prefer to get rid of it all at once and take the price of it away,” said the serjeant, “or would you prefer to pack it all right up again and take yourself and your trade out of here?”

  Fight or give in? was the immediate thought. Giving in might be smarter. Why attract attention? But damn it all, Lorn thought, I’ve hauled these bloody pots four hundred miles, and if this lad thinks intimidation— “You need my pots,” Lorn said, as mildly as he could considering the state of his temper and his nerves, “you pay a fair price for them. Word travels fast in a place like this… and I wouldn’t have to say that word myself. And you’ve got provisioning to do.”

  The serjeant looked at him and smiled ever so slightly. “Well. No harm in trying, is there? Nine.”

  They went back and forth over prices for a few minutes, and finally settled on nine and a quarter. They spat and struck hands on it, and Lorn wondered ironically when the next time might be that he would touch an Arlene regular, and how. But he kept that thought to himself, and started unloading the rest of the pots from Pebble. “Now then,” the serjeant said, “about the horse—”

  His back was turned to the serjeant, so he didn’t see Lorn’s eyes widen in sudden concern. Freelorn straightened up. “What about him?”

  “How much for him?” The serjeant was indicating Pebble.

  “Well—” Lorn started to say, relieved that it wasn’t Blackie involved. But why would a real trader sell him? “No, sorry,” Lorn said. “This is an old friend of mine, and I promised him a comfortable retirement when I didn’t need him any more. And I still do.”

  “Had to ask,” the serjeant said, unconcerned: “we can use every one we can get. Just leave those there, someone will be by to pick them up.” And he paid Lorn, and sauntered off to another stall. Lorn counted his money, more out of reflex than anything else, and looked after the serjeant in mild amusement. Not a bad fellow, really, probably intending to keep the extra over real value as his “skim”. Lorn smiled. “No harm in trying”, indeed….

  He led Blackie and Pebble away, out of the market place and down into one of the twisting streets that led away from it, toward the part of town where one might be expected to find a bed for the night. Lorn knew Hasmë fairly well: he and some of the other younger ones had occasionally come up with his foster-parents from Elefrua for the big “market fair” once a month. He made his way to an old hostelry that he had known of back then, and was pleased to find it still a hostelry, and still run by the same cranky old man who had run it eight years before. Lorn saw to Blackmane’s and Pebble’s stabling, had them fed, and paid in advance for his and their lodging—rather to his shock: no one would ever have asked for payment in advance in the old days. Then he went out into the city to do something he hadn’t had the leisure or opportunity to do in a long time: wander.

  He went up on the walls and leaned there with twenty or thirty other people, drinking wine from one of the wallside pubs, looking down at the mooring roads, and quietly counting the boats there. Some of the people who leaned and drank with Lorn were teamsters on the boats, or independent shippers, and they were complaining about the inadequate compensation payments for the impounding of their boats. “Troops,” one of the boatmen said to him, an annoyed man who had come down with his boat loaded with wool, and had been ready to go out in grain, but now would be going nowhere at all. The man made a sour face and took a long swig of his barley wine. “What’s wrong with the fords then, if they have to have a war, can’t they soldiers walk at all?”

  Lorn heard a lot more of this over the course of the day, as he made his way around the city. The longer he spent at it, the more comfortable he felt, for it was well in character that a trader in from the country, who had disposed of all his wares, would wander around and sample the pleasures of town. No one paid him any attention, and he had no feeling of being followed. He had his nunch-meal at an eating house off one of the upper squares, a place specializing in Steldene food: hots and spices, mostly, with heavy reliance on pork and dairy goods. Lorn tried hard to listen to the gossip around him, but found himself distracted by his braised pork chops pickled in pepper brine, with the typical thick Steldene honey-and- black-vinegar sauce, and a pile of steamed wheat-corns with butter. Then he finished with one of those deadly jar cheeses. “Fr
esh” cheeses, they were called, but this name was a lie, since the soft white cheese was first mixed with onions and garlic and pressed, then left in one of the dreadful southern herb brandies for a month or so, and finally packed in hot-spiced oil to ferment. ‘Foment’ would be a better word for it, Lorn thought as he bit into the first slice of cheese-smeared bread, and the tears came to his eyes: as in revolution. Goddess!! He gulped wine in self-preservation and ate more cheese. I’m safe from arrest, today at least, he thought as he finished it, and pushed the plate away, unsure whether belching would be safe in a place where there were naked flames like candles here and there. No one will dare come near me for hours.

  He paid the scot, adding enough for another cup of watered wine, and took it out into the sunshine to lean against the wall of the eating house, looking out at the square. A lot of other people were doing the same, for out in the midst of things was a band of country mummers, in town for market day, dancing and jingling to bring in customers for a play. Already a few rough props had been set out—a chair, a table, a narrow curtain on a frame—and off to one side, the mummers, in their rags and bright ribbons, were dancing the Hobby-horse Tale and bashing their bell-sticks together. Very old, some of these plays and songs: Lorn could remember the first mummers he had seen, in the smaller market at Egen, with Lalen, and how they had swept away his sophisticate’s scorn with a feeling of something older than the more elegant plays he had seen in Prydon, something much more rooted in the country, and the way things really were. They hadn’t looked not much different from this group, and sounded almost the same. The tatty felted-linen horse-head on the principal dancer, with the peeling paint of its eyes and its shabby mane, certainly looked old enough to belong to the same people….

  They started their first play, the short one, almost immediately. It was the Creation, one of the rude versions. The Goddess came plunging out of the crowd—you could tell it was She by the black cloak spangled with tarnished sequins—and began dashing about like a confused housewife chasing the chickens out of the house, or the cows in. “Where do I start?” She shrieked, running around and waving Her arms, and the audience was far gone in laughter before it realized that She wasn’t just pretending not to know where to start the act of Creation, but was also begging them piteously for a prompt for the first lines of the play. Naturally they all knew them as well as the player did, and shouted at her in ragged chorus, “Now I am alone in void: what boots this empty dark?—” The Goddess-actress stopped at that, looked around at them in mock surprise, and drawled in a horrible fake-Prydon accent, “‘Lone indeed, moi darlins’, too damned much noise in this void by half!”

  The tone was set, and the Goddess spent the rest of the play twitting the audience on their enthusiastic attempts to give Her the wrong lines (“La now, master dirty-shirt, do you think I came down in the last shower? Later for you, My honey: you watch out for lightning… !” She said, goosing the unfortunate butcher with infallible accuracy), and chasing a terrified and ineffective Shadow around the square, whacking It about the head with a broomstick and hollering backstreet abuse. Her Lovers were a hopeless pair, one so preoccupied with metricated verse and Higher Matters that he didn’t notice the other tying his sandal-laces together, the other a buffoon with a hilariously faulty memory and a tendency toward crude bump-and-grind lust (which the Goddess, true to the general bawdiness of the play, partook of readily enough, with many guffaws and much eye-rolling). There was no question that the Lovers would fall out over Her, or that their terrible struggle would go hopelessly farcical. “Let Him come forward now, Him with Whom hands are Joined,” the verse had it: but the Joining of Hands between these two turned into an abortive arm-wrestling contest, with the Goddess passing among the cheering spectators, hawking sweetmeats and dropping caustic comments on the Lovers’ technique. Nor was it anything but logical that the Shadow that arose from Their spoiled love would be a confused, pathetic thing, staggering around trying to Ruin the World, and mostly getting Itself thwacked for Its trouble, all the time whining, “I’m only doing My job!” The audience, including Lorn, laughed until it nearly wet itself, and drank a great deal of wine and barley-water, as the wine- and drink-sellers around the square had doubtless intended.

  The mummers went straight from that play into The Physic—more serious business, not quite so bawdy, but still funny enough. All the old characters came out: Wizard, Hero, the Physic with his (or Her) little bottle, the Fool, the Hound, and Demon-Doubt, who harries them all throughout the play. Lorn leaned there, drinking barley-water at last, and watched the mystery unfold as he had done in the street market in Egen long ago: challenge and slaughter, the dead raised, Doubt wrestled with, but never quite conquered, Goddess and reluctant hero parted and reunited, and parted again: but, as the promise was, “not forever, never forever: the Shore makes sure of that.” It was almost dark by the time they were done.

  Lorn sighed and put his empty cup on the board by the hatch letting into the eating-house, then headed slowly back to his lodgings. He took his time about it. Lamps were lit in the streets now, and inside people’s windows: he indulged a small vice as he went, that of looking inside the windows as he went, to catch a bit of the warmth, of the difference and comfort of their lives, as he went by outside in the cool and lonesome dark.

  He felt the melancholy settling into him, and didn’t fight it. He missed Herewiss badly. That phrase, “The One with whom Hands are Joined,” which had been without any particular meaning to him in his young age, had suddenly come to mean a great deal to him when Herewiss had first become his loved. Freelorn had never until then understood the struggle that underlay even love, as two fight to become one, but still remain themselves, and the singularities of their natures, resisting this state, wrestle for dominance. The lucky ones never achieve it, of course, he thought. He wondered now, as he had before, whether he was one of the lucky ones or not. There were times when Herewiss could be very—

  “… definitely him. He’s done some work on himself, but not nearly enough to hide the face.”

  “… Surprised he would turn up at all. Give him credit, I wouldn’t have thought he’d have the nerve. The stories and all.”

  Lorn’s contemplative state shattered at the words. He became abruptly aware of his surroundings. He was in a long narrow street, barely more than an alleyway, about an eighth of a mile from his lodgings. A bad place to be alone, and to have to leave in a hurry: for the voice speaking those words was that of the serjeant from this morning, and someone else was with him.

  Their footsteps became more audible as they approached, still talking. He had to get away, somehow or other, right now. But there was nowhere to run: nothing around him but sheer walls—

  “Seven years… I guess it might put some backbone into you after all. Well, too bad, he’s headed for the chop.”

  “No he’s not, you just lose that idea! He goes straight to Prydon and not a hair hurt on him. Why do you think they didn’t just shoot him at the gates? They said see what he does, see where he leads us, don’t frighten him off the nest!”

  —but if they saw him now, they would know he had overheard them. The plan they were now discussing, whatever else it involved, would be useless: they would have to take him now. Lorn did the only thing he could. He put his back up against the stone, and drew his knife, and waited. It was still just possible to kill them silently and leave.

  The stone behind his head smelled of moss. That’s peculiar, Lorn thought, almost giddy with fear. The footsteps were just around the bend now. But the stone felt slightly warm under him, like that stone wall he had leant on outside Elefrua, baked with an afternoon’s sun, cooling only slowly while clouds dragged their rainstorms through the broken blue behind them, showering the wheat and the fallow.

  But that stone was this stone, something insisted. Quarried from the same land. And this stone knew him. Knew its own. Could take care of its own—

  They came into view around the curve, moving along
at moderate speed, like men on business—the serjeant from this morning, and a companion also in the tunic and breeches of an Arlene regular, a taller man, dark-haired, thinner. They looked right at him. Lorn gripped the knife, leaned against the warm wall, and waited.

  They looked straight through him, and walked on toward him, and right past him, as if they saw nothing but stone. “No, there’s something else that wants looking into, apparently.”

  “Something else? What, then? Take the head off him, that’s the answer to everything, I’d have thought.”

  Lorn stopped being astonished at his sudden unseeability, and went hot at what they had been saying a few seconds earlier. “Shoot him at the gates—”! So much for his “excellent” disguise, so much for his cool handling of the serjeant. They had known all along. How long have they been watching me? Since Elefrua? Before, possibly? —But it was at Elefrua that this strangeness had started to come to him, something to do with the land: the knowing of it. The being known by it: recognized, owned…. He felt the stone of the wall against his shoulders and back, good Arlene granite, the bones of the earth hereabouts, and thanked it silently.

  And did he hear it say something in return? —

  They were past him now, heading down the alleyway. “No, it seems not. Some business down south—they weren’t too forthcoming, but I can guess. And they want to see who his friends are in Prydon, too. Use to be made of them.” There was a mutter of annoyance. “All we have to do now is find him.”

  “No problem there. What’s he going to do, tunnel under the walls? He’ll go out by the gate like everyone else. We’ll put someone behind him the minute he moves. He stays here, that’s fine too. No one minds if the rat’s comfortable in the trap.”