Complete Short Fiction, page 6
“Then what?”
The sea magician frowned. “We spoke further. He told stories about the winds, and about his triangular sail, which allows him to sail into the wind. He spoke of banks of oarsmen, of seasonal winds, offshore breezes, trade winds, westerlies. It was most enlightening, I confess—”
“Sounds familiar. And was that it?”
“What an ill-formed curse that was! Where goes this world if even curses have no grace?”
“I don’t know. Anything else?”
“No. Having thus relieved himself in my bathwater, the hyena—Wait. He did admire my blade, his own being crudely made, indicating neither edge nor art.” He pulled his dirk out of its scabbard and looked at it pensively. “I should cast the thing into the sea. Its blade will slither away like a serpent, or will cease to cut, or will assault me as I sleep.”
Llobportis took it from him and examined it. It was an ordinary blade, hilt in the shape of a snarling leopard. He looked closely at the tooling marks, and stared, one-eyed, into the leopard’s mouth, as if contemplating pulling a tooth. “What did he say about it?”
“He asked me how it was made. I know nothing of these matters, but made some remark on the subject of fire elementals, off-handedly. I went out of my way to be friendly to that unpleasant discharge of a man, and he sneered at me! Said there was no such animal. Why did I not conjure sticklebacks to swim in his bladder? I told him to be off. He asked where I had acquired it and I. . . .” He trailed off, noting the expression of interest on his interlocutors’ faces. “Ah . . . however, since I . . . won it in a dice game, I could not tell him where it had been made. For some small remuneration, however, I—”
“Hallane’s work,” Llobportis said, irritated at this petty chiseling. “The pattern is quite distinctive.”
This last failure unmanned the sea magician, and he turned and walked toward the other end of the ship with hunched shoulders, enduring the jeers of his shipmates.
“So after Ragana’s, Hallane’s,” Llobportis said. Djeenek and Annom followed as he jumped back onto the quay and strode off.
“Some wine, good sirs?” the fat man said when they reached his storehouse. “I would be most honored—”
“No time!” Llobportis said, annoyed at this unexpected hospitality.
“Hurry is death to the contemplative soul, while rest and drink are its resurrection.”
Llobportis stared at him for a long moment. “You wish to delay us. In the Mage’s name, why?”
Annom bobbed. “The gentleman is, as always, observant. In the event, observe this.” He turned a crank on the side of his storehouse, and a slender white pole descended jerkily, finally coming to a horizontal position about a foot off the ground, where it blocked the quay. “Our new customs barrier, provided, for a fee, by our friend from Taprobane. It replaces the barrier forced upon me by the Sacred Consistory: a wall of phantom fire fifteen feet high, which sounded with, as the specification had it, ‘the clangor of a brazen bell.’ ”
“Sounds impressive,” Llobportis observed.
“Aye, that it was, good sir. But, for a purely symbolic boundary marker, rather obtrusive. Last night, I must say, was the first unbroken night of rest I’ve had since taking employment here. Glad I am that he explained the logical impossibility of that wall of flame to me.”
“It is madmen such as you that will destroy us all,” Djeenek said, his voice heavy. Annom seemed unconcerned.
“Hurry, hurry,” Llobportis said. They left the fat man so, raising and lowering his new, silent customs barrier.
They had, by this time, learned their lesson. So, past the clanging of metal being beaten into submission they went, past the crowd of apprentices, leather-aproned, skin blackened, as they lay and watched the juggler, gathering their strength to return to wrestling with iron bars, past the glow of forges and the crooning songs of master smiths as they coaxed swords from folded metal, past the hissing stink of tempering. Past it all, and straight to the core of silence and dismay: the shop of Hallane.
And silence there was, within. No imprecations. No tongs or hammers tossed about in rage. Just a semicircle of apprentices sitting cross-legged on the floor, their eyes wide, fixed on their master, who stood at his anvil, running his fingers over and over an unfinished sword. He wore only a loincloth and was lean, his muscles as clearly delineated as if he were a statue. His chest, the insides of his arms, and the backs of his hands were dark, patinaed like ancient bronze, for he had given up the life of those parts in return for the power to handle newly forged metal.
He looked up as they entered. His beard moved in golden curls, unsinged by heat, and his eyes had the satin gleam of pewter. He nodded, as if he recognized them. “In his battle with the Leviathan,” he said, “the Mage flung his crooked staff, and the sea, like a living thing struck by a hammer, froze and froze and became as ice, but the fish were yet alive within it, as quicksilver lies within cinnabar, alive and ashine, but held by the matrix.”
“But when the Leviathan had been vanquished,” Djeenek said, “the Mage beseeched the Fair Lady, the Sun, to admire herself in the mirror of ice. She did so, and so bright was her face that, in an instant, the fish were once again in their sea. In the same way, you heat cinnabar in an alembic, and release its mercury, as I am sure you have done here many times.”
“Heat we have not,” the smith said. “The heart of fire is gone. The foreign magician stole it with him and left us but cold casuistry.”
“The usual uneven exchange,” Djeenek said, laying his hand on the great vessel that had held the fire elemental of the smithy. It was cold to the touch.
The smith noticed his look of surprise. “It has been but minutes. Once life decides to flee, it does not linger.”
“Do you know which way he went?” Llobportis said.
“Toward the hill of the magicians. He had tired of dealing with ‘menials’, as he put it, and wished to seek the roots of knowledge.”
“And do the roots of knowledge lie on the heights of the magicians?” Djeenek said, half to himself.
“That is just as he spoke, for he said that the Tree of Knowledge had been uprooted in this land and must be put back aright.”
“We could do as he suggested,” one of the apprentices said, “and make a—what did he call it—a ‘bellows’, to blow onto burning wood. He said the heat would become great enough to—”
The master smith looked at him wearily. “Hush, my child. When the breath of life has stopped, can you replace it with a mechanism?” He ran his fingers, shaking now, down the length of the sword once again. And thus Djeenek and Llobportis left him.
The juggler tossed his torches in a fountain high overhead, the flames reflected in his dark, sweat-sheened shoulders. They paused, captivated by the grace of his performance which, the product of brain and muscle alone, was unaided by magic.
“We must alert the Consistory,” Llobportis was saying. “Call an extraordinary session.”
Djeenek looked at him, slightly quizzical. “That collection of poseurs and exhibitionists? What for?”
Llobportis sputtered. “This man is an evil sorcerer, obviously of great power. You must join your strengths together, against his, and destroy him.”
“The strength of us all together will not suffice to stop him.”
“Is he that powerful, then? He must be an avatar of the Mage himself!”
“No!” Djeenek said, too sharply. “Quite the opposite. His power lies in that he is not a magician at all.”
“Stop speaking in conundrums!”
“Conundrums they certainly are not. An illustration should prove more enlightening than a lecture, I think.” He pulled a gold piece from his purse and tossed it into the juggler’s bowl, where it landed among the coppers with an impressive clank. The performer swiveled, not breaking the flow of his act, and bowed slightly toward them. Djeenek crooked a finger. The torches ceased to fly and the apprentices, disappointed, drifted away.
“Much thanks, sir,” the juggler said, approaching. “How many years have you been performing?”
“Oh, many years, since a child I was.”
“Excellent. In that case, could you explain to us how the thing is done?”
“How it is done?”
“The juggling, of course. What actions do you perform, and in what order. Tell me straight, now, and simply, with no tricks, or misdirections to mislead the uninitiated.”
“No misdirections—I just do it.”
“Nonsense! Such exercises are certainly amenable to analysis. As an example, detail for us the performance of the fountain of torches. Each catch of the hand, each turn of the wrist—a simple request, surely.”
The man closed his eyes and frowned, making unconscious gestures with his hands. “I toss this one here . . . flip that one over . . . no . . . wait . . . I catch this one thus . . . but not before tossing the other. . . .” The sweat, which had dried on his face, began to reappear.
“Now, now,” Djeenek said. “Do not fool with us, for we are gentlemen of quality who want a simple explication of your trade. We do not seek to steal your secrets, so there is no need for you to conceal them.”
“I conceal nothing!”
“Very well, then. Run through your fountain, concentrate intently on the motions, and then explain it to us. No need for the torches; use those clubs there.”
The juggler picked them up and, looking at his hands, commenced to toss. The clubs flew up randomly in the air, one of them coming down on Llobportis’s head with a thump. The juggler’s cry of anguish was louder than that of the policeman.
“Again,” Djeenek commanded. “And pay attention this time.”
Again the clubs flew, and again they crashed to the ground. Llobportis managed to cover his head.
“I . . . I . . .”
Djeenek crossed his arms. “No satisfaction from you this day, I see. Practice your craft, sir, practice your craft. Simple advice, but true. Good day.”
He strode off, Llobportis following, leaving the juggler standing in the empty square, surrounded by scattered juggling clubs.
“You’ve lost that man his livelihood through that spell,” Llobportis said. “Why?”
“You are confusing metaphor with reality. He’ll cease thinking about it long before he’s managed to spend that gold piece. And no spell was involved, merely the innate perversity of the human mind. Were you really so dull as to miss the lesson?”
“Well, I—”
“The human mind is overly amenable to reason. And magic, like most great human achievements, exists outside of reason, often contending with it like a fish swimming upstream. Since the Mage invented that way of looking at the world that we call magic, and floated islands and raised whirlwinds, we have been performing a juggling act. This madman from Taprobane now wishes us to watch what we’re doing, and drop our torches. He would send this whole sunlit world aglimmering.”
“I never knew that magic was so fragile a thing.”
The street down which they walked was long and silent, lined with lemon trees. The facades of the rich houses glowed in the afternoon light, their guardian figures, lions and bulls, regarding the interlopers with bored suspicion.
“There, within those houses, you will find fancies of blown and fluted glass, like transparent undersea creatures. One careless hand, one vagrant puff of breeze, and they fall to the floor and shatter into lacerating shards. And yet, when the sun shines on them through a half-open window, as it does now, late in the day, there is nothing more beautiful in all the world.”
“Murder!” a woman’s voice cried. “Oh, murder!”
The call came from down a narrow alley way. After sorting themselves out at the entrance, they made quick time, to find a woman dressed in blue, a matron, with heavy earrings and elaborately coiffed hair. She leaned dramatically against a wall, the back of her hand pressed against her forehead.
“Who’s been murdered?” Llobportis asked.
She regarded him demurely through long eyelashes. “No one, thank goodness. That would be just what I need.”
Llobportis’s face darkened, but he retained his composure, as all policemen must when dealing with the wealthy and capricious. “Then why cry murder?”
“It is easy to scream, and gets results, as you can see. It stands as symbolic of all crimes. ‘My pet griffon has been stolen’ is much more difficult. But,” she sniffled, “some bastard did it!” She pointed at an empty neckring, attached to the wall by a chain. “And murder’s the best he deserves.”
“Someone stole your griffon?” Llobportis said. “Claws, beak, nasty temperament, and all?”
“Varlam had a very gentle temperament,” she said. “He never bit anyone who didn’t deserve it.”
“How did it happen? And did it get done without cutting through that neck ring?”
“I am not familiar with criminal techniques as, I suppose, you must be, so I’ll leave details like that up to you. But I heard Varlam arguing with someone. It was getting a little loud, and I was trying to take a nap, so I came down to see what it was about, and Varlam was gone. Just like that!”
“What was the argument about?”
“It was strange. The man Varlam was arguing with was saying that Varlam didn’t exist. Isn’t that silly? With his claws so nicely varnished, and all. When was the last time you heard of anything not existing that had varnished claws?”
“Not recently. What then?”
“Well, Varlam, bless him, argued his case strenuously. But he started to get a bit doubtful, I thought. That animal is no moron.”
“He knows a logical argument when he hears one.”
“Exactly! Finally, I heard the man say, ‘taxonomically, you cannot exist’. Well. I knew then that he was from the Ministry of Revenue. Imagine that! Where will it all end?”
“I’m afraid to think about it. Is that it?”
“Yes. When I got down, Varlam was gone. Probably hauled off to the Ministry to have tax stamps put on him, which he won’t like, let me tell you, not one bit. One of those bastards is going to lose a finger, or worse.” The thought cheered her.
“Which way did he go?”
“He didn’t come past me, so he must have gone out that end of the alley.”
She called after them. “He’ll be hungry when you find him. Feed him a couple of live frogs. He loves them. No salt.”
The air had that luminosity peculiar to twilight, when the world, overreaching itself, resolves to glow in the absence of the sun, and all the details of life, from the leaves on the laurel trees to the cracks in the plaster behind the spouting head of a fountain, achieve, for an instant, an aching significance. They toiled up the twisting stairs that led to the Street of the Magicians.
“That is where he is, of course,” Djeenek gasped. “I should never have doubted it. It is not in the seeking that one finds, but in the being sought.”
“What are you blathering about?” Llobportis said. “You know where he is?”
“It was where it was inevitable that he should end up. In the chambers of the most powerful and most respected magician he could find.”
“That makes sense, in a sort of self-aggrandizing way.”
The silhouette of the Malachite Tower thrust itself into the last glow of the sunset. Just below the peaked roof glowed a single window, that of Djeenek’s study. And, dimly seen, there was one impatient, pacing figure.
Grammadurhu, a tall, stooped man with a nut-brown complexion and, for such is the nature of eyewitness testimony, a gray robe, stood contemplating Djeenek’s irrigation table. He looked up as they entered, irritated, as if they were late for an appointment.
“You’re under arrest!” Llobportis shouted.
The man just looked at him. “Do you feel that your legal procedures are in need of improvement? Not strictly my field, mind you, but I am willing—”
Llobportis grinned, nastily. “The Prefect has had a problem lately, something right up your alley, now that you mention it. Seems some of the racks in the Municipal Torture Chambers have been causing dismemberment rather than simple joint dislocation. A firsthand study on your part might give you some ideas. . . .”
Grammadurhu blanched under his dark skin, but managed to cock an eyebrow. “Your threats are, I am afraid, a bit too literary to be as fearsome as you intend.”
“A common observation made by the people I have to deal with. A handshake with a pair of red hot pincers always turns them around, though; I’ve always noticed that.”
“Lloi!” Djeenek said. “You are being rude.”
“Another common observation.” He plopped down into the one vacant chair. “Djeenek. Produce some more of that wine, and we can interrogate this maniac in a civilized manner, without pulling out the thumbscrews or resorting to bastinado. Just like in the best households.”
Djeenek, with his own version of the raised eyebrow, did as he was bid.
“Djeenek the Prismatic?” Grammadurhu said. “The master illusionist? Your fame has stretched through the Inner Sea, and beyond.” His voice was controlled, but he avoided Llobportis’s gaze.
“Illusionist?” Djeenek said, irritated. “Don’t play your foolish labeling games with us here. I perceive that an ‘engineer’ is merely a sort of paradoxologist who sows havoc so that he may reap profit. Illusionist, indeed!” He handed the Taprobani a cup of wine, with the air of a gracious, if sorely tried, host.
“Engineering is merely the solution of human problems by the application of physical laws,” Grammadurhu said. “It is honest work.”
“Creation of human problems, you mean,” Llobportis said. “I have seen no solutions, myself.”
“Is it my fault if no one listens to me?” Grammadurhu said, a trace of exasperation coming into his voice.
“They listen too well, damn you!” Llobportis shouted.
