The Magician of Karakosk: Tales from the Innkeeper's World Page 7

  Well, then. She greeted Lanak most royally and courteously, even saying to him with an appealing air of shyness, “Sir, I have never received a great wizard in these rooms before. You must pardon me if I hardly know how to behave.”

  Those were her very words, as I was told them, and of course she could have said nothing more calculated to reach the heart of Lanak, who really was shy. He swallowed hard several times, finally managing to reply, “Majesty, I am no great wizard, but only a journeyman from a town of journeymen. As honored as I am, I cannot imagine why you have summoned me, who have your pick of masters.”

  And he meant it, and the Queen could see that he meant it, and she smiled the way a cat smiles in its sleep. She said, “Indeed, I must confess that I have made some small study of wizards. I know very well who the masters in this realm are, and who the journeymen—every one—and which lay claim to mastery who would be hard put to turn cream into butter. And nowhere have I heard tales to equal the word I have of you, good Lanak. Without even stirring from your dear little town whose name I keep forgetting, you have become the envy of magicians whose names I am sure you cannot know. What have you to say of that, I wonder?”

  Lanak did not know at all what to say. He looked at his hands, stared away at the pale rose canopy over the Queen’s bed, and finally mumbled, “I think it is no good thing to be envied. If what you tell me is true, it distresses me greatly, but I cannot believe it is so. How could a Rhyssa, a K’Shas, a Tombry Dar envy Lanak of Karakosk? You are mistaken, Majesty, surely.”

  “Queens are never mistaken,” the Queen answered him, “as even great wizards must remember.” But she went on smiling kindly and thoughtfully at Lanak. “Well, I will test your skill then, though for your reassurance, not my own. The water of my domain is not of the best, as you know.”

  Lanak did know, as you here cannot, even the oldest among us. In the time of which I tell you, the water of Fors na’Shachim and the country round about was renowned for its bitterness. It was not vile enough to be undrinkable, nor foul enough to cause sickness or plague, but it tasted like copper coins and harness polish, with a slight touch of candle wax. Clothes washed in any stream turned a pale, splotchy yellow which came quickly to identify their owners to amused outsiders; indeed, citizens of Fors were often referred to as “pissbreeches” in those days. The term is still used now and then, even today, though no one in the city could tell you why.

  The Queen said, “I have requested several wizards to improve the water of Fors na’Shachim. I will not embarrass such an unassuming man by revealing their names. Suffice it to say that not one succeeded, though all proved most wondrously gifted at vanishing when I showed my displeasure.” She leaned forward and touched Lanak’s rough brown hand. “I am confident that it will be quite otherwise with you.”

  Lanak answered helplessly, “I will do my best, Majesty. But I fear sorely that I will disappoint you, like my colleagues.”

  “Then I hope you are at least their equal at disappearing,” the Queen replied. She laughed, to show him that this was meant humorously, and stood up to indicate that the interview was at an end. As Lanak was backing out of the room (Dwyla had read somewhere about the proper way to take leave of royalty), she added, “Sleep well, good friend. For myself, I will certainly be awake all night, imagining my subjects’ surprise and pleasure when they brew their afternoon tea tomorrow.”

  But Lanak never even lay down in the grand, soft bed which had been prepared for him. He paced his room in the moonlight, trying as hard as he could to imagine which magicians had already tried their skills on Fors’s water, and which charms they might have attempted. For there is a common language of magic, you know, just as there is in music: it is the one particular singer, the one particular chayad-player, the one particular wizard who makes the difference in the song or the spell. Lanak walked in circles, muttering to himself, that whole night, and at last he stood very still, staring blankly out of the window at the dark courtyard below. And when morning came, he ate the handsome breakfast that the Queen’s own butler had brought to him, washed it down with the eyewash that still passes for ale in Fors, then belched comfortably, leaned back in his chair, and turned the water of the realm sweeter than any to be found without crossing an ocean. And so it remains to this day, though apparently he could do nothing with the ale.

  The Queen was mightily pleased. She brought Lanak out on a high balcony and embarrassed him immensely by showing him to her folk as the wonder-worker who had done for them what the mightiest sorcerers in all the land had incessantly promised and failed to do. They cheered him deliriously, celebrated him all that day and the next, and were generally useless as subjects until the Silver Guard harried them back to work. Most of that last was done out of Lanak’s sight, but not all.

  “There,” said the Queen. “Have you not satisfied yourself now that you are wizard enough to serve me?”

  But Lanak said, “Majesty, it was merely my good fortune that I understand water. Water, in its nature, does not like to feel itself foul; it recoils from its own taste as much as you do. All I needed to do was to become the water of Fors na’Shachim, to feel my way down into the source of its old bitterness and become that too. Your other wizards cannot have been country people, or they would have known this, too. In the country, spells and glamours are the very least of magic—understanding, becoming what you understand, that is all of it, truly. My Queen, you need a wizard who will understand the world of queens, ministers, captains, campaigns. Forgive me, I am not that man.”

  “Do not speak to me of my needs,” the Queen answered him, and her tone was hard for the first time. “Speak of my desires, as I bid you.” But she quickly hid her impatience and patted Lanak’s hand again. She said, “Very well, then, very well, let me set you one last unnecessary test. It is known to be beyond any doubt that three high officers of my Silver Guard are in the pay of a foreign lord whose name does not matter. I cannot prove this, but that would not matter”—and she showed just the tips of her teeth—“if I but knew who they were. Find these traitors out for me, simple country Lanak, and be assured forever of my favor.”

  Now even in Karakosk, Lanak had resisted all efforts to make him, with his magical talents, a sheriff, a constable, a thief-taker. He wanted no part of the Queen’s request, but even he could see that there was no courteous way to decline without offending her hospitality. So he said at last, “So be it, but give me the night once again to take counsel with my spirits.” And this being just the sort of talk the Queen wanted to hear, and not any prattle of understanding and becoming, she smiled her warmest smile and left Lanak to himself. But she also left two trusted men-at-arms clanking back and forth outside his door that night, and another under his window, because you never know with wizards either.

  And there went another night’s sleep for our poor Lanak, who had been so peacefully accustomed to snuggling close to Dwyla, with his arm over her and her cold feet tucked in between his. As before, he brooded and pondered, proposing courses of action aloud to himself and each time breaking in to deride himself for an incompetent fool. But somewhere between deep midnight and dawn, as before, he grew very still, as only a wizard can be still; and by and by, he began to draw odd lines and shapes in the dust on the windowsill, and then he began to say words. They made no more sense than the dust trails he was tracing; nor was there anything grandly ominous in the sound of them. By and by, he stopped speaking and just leaned his head against the window like a child on a rainy day, gazing silently down at the courtyard. I think he even slept a little, with his eyes half-open, for he was quite weary.

  And presently what do you suppose?—there came the sound of quick hoofbeats on stone, and a horseman in the glinting livery of the Silver Guard clattered across the courtyard, past the inner gatehouse without so much as a glance for the drowsy sentry, and away for the portcullis at full gallop. Nothing stirred within the black castle, least of all the wizard Lanak.

  An hour, maybe less, and
by all the seagoing gods of the terrible Goro folk, another rider went heading away from Fors as fast as he could travel. Panting on his heels came another, and what Lanak could see of his face in the icy moonlight was taut with fear, wooden with fear. No more after them, but Lanak leaned at that window all the rest of that night, maybe sleeping, maybe not.

  In the morning he went to the Queen in her throne room and told her to turn out the Silver Guard for review. Since she was used to doing this no more than once a week, she looked at Lanak in some surprise, but she did what he said. And when she noticed that three of her highest-ranking officers were notable for not being there, nor anywhere she sent to find them, she turned on Lanak and raged in his face, “You warned them! You helped them escape me!”

  “I did no such thing,” Lanak answered calmly. Even a wide-eyed countryman can take the measure of royalty, give him time enough, and he had the Queen’s by now. “Seeking to learn who your turncoats might be, I sent a spell of fear over your entire garrison, a spell of guilt and unreasoning terror of discovery. Those three panicked and fled in the night, and can do you no more harm.”

  “I wanted them,” the Queen said. Her own face was very pale now, and her voice was gentle as gentle. “I wanted to see them with their bones broken and their skin stripped off, hanging from my balcony, still a little alive, blackening in the sun. I am very disappointed, Lanak.”

  “Well,” Lanak murmured apologetically, “I did tell you I was not the right sort of wizard for a queen.” He kept his face and his manner downcast, even somber, trying hard to keep his jubilation from spilling over. The Queen would be bound to dismiss him from her service on the spot, and on his own, unburdened by mounted companions, he could be home in Karakosk for lunch, bouncing his daughter on his knee and telling Dwyla what it was like to dine in the black castle with musicians playing for you. But the Queen confounded him.

  “No, you are not,” she said, and there was no expression at all in her voice. “None of you are, not a preening, posturing one of you. But I realized that long ago, as I realized what I would have to do to attain my desire.” She was staring at him from far behind her dark, shiny eyes; and Lanak, who—without ever thinking about it, feared very little—looked back at her and was afraid.

  “You will teach me,” the Queen said. “You will teach me your magic—all of it, all of it, every spell, every gesture, every rune, every rhyme of power. Do you understand me?”

  Lanak tried to speak, but she waved him silent, showing him the tips of her teeth again. She said, “Do you understand? You will not leave this place until I know everything you know. Everything.”

  “It will take your lifetime,” Lanak whispered. “It is not a business of learning one spell or learning a dozen. One is always becoming a wizard, always—”

  “Becoming again,” the Queen snapped contemptuously. “I did not order you to teach me the philosophy of magic—it is your magic itself I desire, and I will have it, be very sure of that.” Now she softened her tone, speaking in soothing counterfeit of the way in which she had first greeted him. “It will not take nearly as long as all that, good Lanak. You will find me quite a good pupil—I learn swiftly when the matter is of interest to me. We will begin tomorrow, and I promise to surprise you by the end of the very first day. And Lanak”—and here her voice turned flat and hard once again—“please do not let even the shadow of a thought of taking wizard’s leave of me cross your mind. Your wife and child in quaint little Karakosk would not thank you for it.”

  Lanak, who had been within two short phrases and one stamp of his foot of taking that very course, felt himself turning to stone where he stood. His voice sounded far away in his own ears, empty as her voice, saying, “If you have harmed them, I will have every stone of this castle down to make your funeral barrow. I can do this.”

  “I should hope you can,” the Queen answered him. “Why would I want to study with a wizard who could do any less? And yes, you could have your dear family safe in your arms days before I could get any word to the men who have been keeping friendly watch over them since you left home. And you could destroy those same men with a wave of your hand if they and a thousand like them came against you, and another thousand after those—I know all that, believe me, I do.” Her sleeping-cat smile was growing wider and warmer as she spoke.

  “But for how long, Lanak? For how long could you keep them safe, do you think? Never mind the legions, I am not such a fool as to put my faith in lances and armor against such a man. I am speaking of the knife in the marketplace, the runaway coach in the crowded street, the twilight arrow in the kitchen garden. Is your magic—no, is your attention powerful enough to protect those you love every minute of the rest of their lives? Because it had better be, Lanak. I have my failings, queen or no queen, but no one has ever said of me that I was not patient. I will not grow weary of waiting for my opportunity, and I will not forget. Think very well on this, wizard, before you bid me farewell.”

  Lanak did not answer her for a long time. They stood facing one another, alone in the great cold throne room, hung with the ceremonial shields and banners of a hundred queens before this Queen, and what passed between their eyes I cannot tell you. But Lanak said at last, “So be it. I will teach you what I know.”

  “I am grateful and most honored,” replied the Queen, and there was almost no mockery in her tone. “When you have completed your task, you may go in peace, laden to exasperation with a queen’s gifts to your family. Until tomorrow, then.” And she inclined her head graciously for Lanak to bow himself out of the room.

  If no one would mind, I’ll pass quickly over what Lanak thought that night, and over what he felt and did in solitude—even over whether he slept or not, which I certainly hope he did. I doubt very much that any of you could have slept, or I myself, but magicians are very different people from you and me. It was the Queen’s misfortune that, clever as she was, she could not imagine just how different magicians are.

  In any case, she appeared in Lanak’s quarters early the next morning, just like any other eager student hoping to make a good impression on her teacher. And the truth is that she did exactly that. She had not been boasting when she called herself a quick learner: by afternoon he had already taken her through the First Principles of magic, which are at once as simple as a nursery rhyme and as slippery as buttered ice. Many’s the wizard who will tell you that nothing afterward in his training was ever as difficult as comprehending First Principles. Kirisinja herself took eight months—so the tale has it, anyway.

  And the Queen did indeed surprise Lanak greatly that day when, illustrating the Sixth Principle, he made a winter-apple fade out of existence, and she promptly reversed his gesture and called the apple into being again. Elementary, certainly; but since the Sixth Principle involves bringing back, not the vanished object itself, but the last actual moment when the object existed, it is easy to understand why Lanak was a good deal more than surprised. A great many people have at least a small gift for magic, but most die without ever realizing this. The Queen knew.

  Now I will tell you, the appalling thing for Lanak was that he found himself enjoying teaching her; even rather looking forward to their lessons. He had never taught his art before, nor had he ever had much opportunity to discuss it with other wizards. Dwyla was as knowledgeable as one could wish about the daily practicalities of living with magic, but as indifferent as the Queen to the larger reality behind the chalked circles and pentacles that she scrubbed off the floor many mornings. But the Queen at least was hungry to know every factor that might possibly affect the casting or the success of even the smallest spell. Lanak felt distinctly guilty at times to be enjoying his work with her as much as he was.

  Because he had no illusions at all regarding what she proposed to do with the skills she was acquiring from him. She said it herself, more than once: “This whole realm south of the Durlis should be a true kingdom, an empire, and what is it? Nothing but a rusty clutter of overgrown family estates, with
not even energy enough for a decent war. Well, when I am a wizard, we will see about that. Believe me, we will.”

  “Majesty, you will never be a wizard,” Lanak would answer her plainly. “When we are done, you may have a wizard’s abilities, yes. It is not at all the same thing.”

  The Queen would laugh then: a child’s spluttering giggle that never quite concealed the iron delight beneath. “It will serve me just as well, my dear Lanak. Everything will serve me, soon enough.”

  And soon enough would arrive altogether too soon, Lanak realized, if the Queen kept up her astonishing pace of study. She was not so much learning as devouring, annexing the enchantments he taught her, as she planned to annex every one of the little city-states, provinces, and principalities she derided. He had no doubt that she could do it: any competent wizard could have done so straightforward a thing long before, if wizards were at all concerned with that sort of power, which they are not. Even the most evil wizard has no real interest in land or riches or great glory in the mortal world. That is a game for kings, and for queens—what those others covet is a tale I will not tell here.

  This tale, now—it might have had a very different ending if Lanak had not been a married man. As I have said, magicians almost never take wives or husbands; when they lie sleepless, it is because they are brooding mightily over the ethics of conjuration, the logical basis of illusion, the influence of the stars on shape-shifting. But Lanak’s nights were haunted by his constant worry about Dwyla and his little daughter, and about Dwyla’s worry about him (he had not dared attempt to communicate with her for weeks, even by magical means, for fear of provoking her watchers), and the deep-growing anger of a mild man. This last is very much to be wary of, whether your man is a wizard or no. But the Queen had never had to consider such things. No more than had Lanak, when you come to think about it.