by Larry Niven
* * * *
Dirrach’s seating arrangements were clever, the hanging oil lamps placed so that he would be partly in shadow near the fireplace. The special flagstone rested atop the bladder where Dirrach’s foot could reach it, and specially decorated flagons bore symbols that clearly implied who would sit where. The shaman’s duties included tasting every course and flagon before it reached the royal lips, though poison was little used in Lyris. Dirrach congratulated himself on placing the woman across from him, for Dirrach’s place was at the king’s side, and anything the woman said to Bardel could be noted by the shaman as well. A second advantage was that women were widely known to have scant capacity for wine; Gethae would sit at the place most likely to permit unmasking of a shaman’s little tricks; and if Gethae denounced him it could be chalked up to bleary vision of an inebriate who could also be accused of hostile aims. Especially on the morrow.
Yet Gethae showed herself to good advantage as she swept into the castle with her new acquaintances. “I claim a rematch,” she said, laying a companionable hand on Boerab’s shoulder gorget. “Bardel’s eye is a trifle too good today.” Her laugh was throaty, her carriage erect and, Dirrach admitted, almost kingly. Already she spoke Bardel’s name with ease.
Bardel started to enter the hall, stumbled as he considered letting the stately Gethae precede him but reconsidered in the same instant that such courtesy was reserved for the mothers of kings. “I was lucky, Gethae—ooop, damn flagstones anyhow; ahh, smells good in here; oh, there you are, Dirrach,” Bardel rattled on with a wave. Actually the hall stank of smoke and sweat—but then, so did the king.
Boerab introduced Dirrach to the Shandorian whom he treated as an equal. “Sorry you were busy here, Dirrach,” the old soldier lied manfully. “This sturdy wench pulls a stronger bow than I thought possible.”
“Put it down to enthusiasm,” said Gethae, exchanging handclasps with Dirrach. Her glance was both calculating and warm.
“Huh; put it down to good pectorals,” Boerab rejoined, then raised his eyes to heaven: “Ulp; ghaaaa…”
“I accept that as a compliment,” said Gethae, smiling.
Dirrach saw that such compliments were justified; the Shandorian’s physical impact could not be denied, and a man like Boerab might find his judgment colored with lust. But Dirrach’s tastes were narrow and, “I fear we have prepared but rough entertainment for a lady,” said the shaman in cool formality.
“I can accept that too,” she said, still smiling as she peered at the feast table. “Ho, Averae: I see we’re to be kept apart.”
Averae of Moess found his own place with a good-natured gibe to the effect that a small plot with Shandor would have been a pleasure. Plainly, the shaman saw, this woman enjoyed the company of men without considering herself one. Had he only imagined an invitation in her smile of greeting?
Dirrach found that it had not been mere imagination. All through the courses of chestnut bread, beef and fowl, beer and honeycake, the shaman shifted his feet to avoid the questing instep of the long-legged Gethae. At one point Dirrach felt his false-bottomed flagstone sink as he hastily moved his foot, saw reflection in Gethae’s frank dark eyes of a sudden flare in the fireplace. But Gethae was stoking a fire of another sort and noticed nothing but Dirrach himself. The shaman took it philosophically; he could not help it if Gethae had an appetite for men in their middle years. But he would not whet that appetite either, and pointedly guided Bardel into dialogue with the woman.
Eventually the beer was replaced by a tow-headed lad bearing the most famed product of Lyris: the heady wine of the north lakeshore. Gethae sipped, smacked, grinned; sipped again. Very soon she pronounced her flagon empty and beamed at the boy who filled it. “The lad,” she said to one and all, “has unlocked Lyris’s wealth!”
All took this as a toast and Gethae winked at the boy, who winked back. “I predict you’ll go far,—ah, what’s your name, lad?”
“Oroles, ma’am,” said the boy, growing restive as others turned toward the interchange. “I’ve already gone as far as the end of the lake.”
“You’ll go farther,” Gethae chuckled.
“Here’s to travel,” said the king. “Keep traveling around the table, Orolandes.”
Dutiful laughter faded as the boy replied; servants did not correct kings. “Oroles, please sir—but you’re almost right.”
Boerab, in quick jocularity: “In honor of the great Orolandes, no doubt.”
“Aw, you knew that, Boerab,” said the boy in gentle accusation, and again filled Gethae’s flagon, his tongue between his teeth as he poured. The boy’s innocent directness, his ignorance of protocol, his serious mien struck warm response first from Averae, himself a grandfather. Averae began to chuckle, then to laugh outright as others joined in.
Oroles did not fathom this levity and continued in his rounds until, perceiving that his own king was laughing at him, he stopped, hugging the wine pitcher to him. The small features clouded; a single tear ran down his cheek.
Boerab was near enough to draw Oroles to him, to offer his flagon for filling, to mutter in the boy’s ear. “No fear, lad; they’re laughing for you, not at you.”
Gethae could not tell whether Boerab was praising or scolding the boy and resolved to generate a diversion. With a by-your-leave to Bardel she stood. “At such a merry moment, a guest might choose to pay tribute.”
“Ill-said,” from Averae, “because I wish I’d said it first.” More merriment, fueled by alcohol.
“I yield,” Gethae mimed a fetching swoon, “to Moess—for once.”
Bardel understood enough of this byplay to lead the guffaws. Averae bowed to the king, to the woman, then performed quick syncopated handclaps before turning expectantly toward the door.
A blocky Moessian—it was poor form to seat one’s bodyguard at a state feast—entered, arms outstretched with obvious effort to hold their burden. At Averae’s gesture, the man knelt before the beaming young king.
“May you never need to use it, sire,” from Averae.
Bardel took the wicked handax, licked its cold iron head to assure himself of its composition. It was a heavy cast Ostran head, hafted with care, and as Bardel swung it experimentally the applause was general.
Except for Dirrach. The shaman muttered something unintelligible and Bardel’s face fell. “This pleased me so,” said the king, “that I forgot. Trust Dirrach to remind me: no weapons in the feast hall. No, no, Averae,” he said quickly; “you gave no offense. Boy,” he offered the ax to Oroles, “have a guard put this in my chamber. I’ll sleep with it tonight.”
So it shall be mine tomorrow, thought Dirrach.
Oroles, cradling the wine pitcher in one arm, took the ax with his free hand. Its weight caused him nearly to topple, a splash of golden liquid cascading onto the flagstones. Dirrach was not agile enough and, wine-splattered to his knees, would have struck the boy who bolted from the hall with wine and weapon.
But: “A boy for a man’s job,” Boerab tutted. “At least we have wine to waste.”
Dirrach quenched his outward anger, resumed his seat and said innocently, “I fear we have given offense to Moess.” He knew the suggestion would be remembered on the morrow, despite Averae’s denial which was immediate and cordial.
Then it was Gethae’s turn. The Shandorian reached into her scarlet silken sleeve, produced a sueded pouch, offered it to Bardel with a small obeisance.
“What else might Shandorians have up them sleeves,” murmured Dirrach with false bonhomie.
“A body search might reward you,” Gethae replied in open invitation. Dirrach did not need to respond for at that moment Bardel emptied the pouch into his hand. There was total silence.
“Oh damn,” Gethae breathed, and chuckled; “I’d hoped to keep them damp.” Bardel, perplexed, held several opaque porous stones. One, by far the largest, was the size of a goose egg, set into a horn bezel hung from a finely braided leather loop. The others were unset and all had been smoothed to t
he texture of eggshell.
Dirrach almost guessed they were gallstones, for which magical properties were sometimes claimed. Instead he kept a wise look, and his silence.
Gethae retrieved the great stone. “Here; a bit of magic from the northern barbarians, if you’ll stretch a point.” She extended her tongue, licked the stone which actually adhered to the moist flesh until she plucked it away, held it aloft. Even Dirrach gasped.
The properties of hydrophane opal were unknown even in Shandor; Gethae had been jesting about magic. The Shandorians had imported the stones from the north at tremendous expense; knew only that this most porous of opals was dull when dry but became a glittering pool of cloudy luminescence when dampened. As the moisture evaporated, the stone would again become lackluster. Thus the Shandorians did not suspect the enormous concentration of mana which was unlocked by moistening a hydrophane.
Had Gethae known the proper spell, she could have carved away the Tihan peninsula or turned it all to metal with the power she held. Even her fervent prayer for strength to pull a Lyrian bow had been enough earlier, before the opals in her pouch had dried. Yet none of this was suspected by Gethae. Her fluid gesture in returning the huge gem to Bardel was half of a stormspell. She, with the others present, interpreted the sudden skin-prickling electricity in the air as the product of awe.
Bardel took the gift in wonderment. “Spit is magic?”
“Or water, wine, perspiration,” Gethae chuckled. “I have heard it argued that oil scum on water creates the same illusion of magical beauty. And has the same natural explanation.” she shrugged. “Don’t ask me to explain it; merely accept it as Shandor’s gift.”
This called for another toast. “Where the devil is that winebearer?” Bardel asked.
Oroles scurried back from his errand to pour. Even Bardel could see the boy trembling in anticipation of punishment, saw too that the outlanders had taken a liking to the slender child. With wisdom rare in him, Bardel suddenly picked up the smallest of the opals, still opaque and dry. The king ostentatiously dipped the pebble into his wine, held it up before Oroles who marveled silently at the transformation. “For your services,” said Bardel, “and for entertainment.” With that he dropped the opal, the size of a babe’s thumbnail, into the hand of Oroles.
Bardel acknowledged the applause, hung the great hydrophane amulet around his own sweaty neck, pledged packtrains of Lyrian wine as gifts for Moess and Shandor. “And what say you of outlander magics,” he asked of the glum Dirrach. It was as near as Bardel would come to commanding a performance from his shaman. He knew some doubted Dirrach’s miracles, but Bardel was credulous as any bumpkin.
Dirrach grasped his talisman of office, a carved wand with compartmented secrets of its own, and waved it in the air. “Iron strikes fire on stone,” he intoned; “stone holds inner fire with water. But true mana can bring fire to fire itself.” It only sounded silly, he told himself, if you thought about it. But the powdered lignite in the wand would keep anybody else from thinking about it.
Dirrach knew where the fireplace was, did not need to look over his shoulder as he manipulated the wand and trod on the false flagstone, feeding pungent oil to the blaze. He felt the heat, saw astonishment in the eyes of his audience, smiled to see Oroles cringe against the wall. He did not realize that the flames behind him had, for a moment only, blazed black. The gleaming hydrophanes of Bardel and Oroles were near enough that Dirrach’s wandpass had called forth infinitesimal mana in obedience to a reversal gesture-spell. It did not matter that Dirrach was wholly incompetent to command mana. All that mattered was the mana and the many means for its discharge as magic. Knowingly or not. The jewel at Bardel’s throat glimmered with unspent lightnings.
Unaware of the extent of his success, and of the enormous forces near him, Dirrach mixed blind luck with his sleight-of-hand and his hidden-lever tricks. The shaman was a bit flummoxed when two white doves fluttered up from the false bottom of his carven chair; he’d only put one bird in there. He was similarly pensive when the coin he “found” in Averae’s beard turned out to be, not the local bronze celt Dirrach had palmed beforehand, but a silvery roundish thing which Averae claimed before either of them got a good look at the picture stamped on it. Inspection would have told them little in any case: the Thracian portrait of Alexander was not due to be reproduced for centuries to come.
And when a spatter of rain fell inside, all assumed that it was also raining outside; even royal roofs leaked a bit. At last Gethae sighed, “My compliments, Dirrach. But tell me: how did you breed mice to elk? That was subtly done.”
Indeed it was; so subtly that only Gethae had noticed the tiny antlered creatures that scampered across hearthstones and into the fire during one of Dirrach’s accidental spells. Dirrach did not know if his leg was being pulled, and only smiled.
Bardel called for more wine when the shaman claimed his mana was waning. Oroles was pouring when Averae asked what credence might be placed in the tales of ancient shamans.
“Much of it is true,” replied Dirrach, taking an obligatory sip from Bardel’s flagon, thinking he lied even as he gazed at the truth gleaming darkly on Bardel’s breast. “Yet few of us know the secrets today. You’d be surprised what silly frauds I’ve seen; and as for the nonsense I hear from afar: well—” Aping a lunatic’s expression, hands fluttering like his doves, Dirrach began a ludicrous capering that brought on gales of mirth. And while his audience watched the wand he tossed into the air, Dirrach dropped a pinch of death into the king’s flagon. There was enough poison there to dispatch a dozen Bardels. Dirrach would feign illness presently, and of course the winebearer would later be tortured for information he did not have.
But there was information which Dirrach lacked, as well. He would never have performed a gestural wardspell, nor given anyone but himself the gift of conversing with other species, had he known just what occult meanings lay in his mummery.
* * * *
The next day was one of sweltering heat, and did nothing to sweeten the odor of the fish Thyssa was filleting outside Panon’s smokehouse. “Oroles, turn these entrails under the soil in Panon’s garden,” she called. “Oroles!”
The boy dropped his new treasure into his waistpouch, hopped from his perch on a handcart and scrambled to comply after muttering something, evidently to thin air.
“Don’t complain,” she said, tasting perspiration on her lips.
“I wasn’t,” said Oroles. “Did you know the castle midden heap is rich with last night’s leavings and, uh, suc—succulent mice?”
“How would you know,” she asked, not really listening.
“Oh—something just tells me.”
Despite her crossness, Thyssa smiled. “A little bird, no doubt.”
Pausing to consider: “That’s an idea,” the boy said, and trudged off, head averted from his burden.
Hidden from Thyssa by the smokehouse, Oroles could still be heard as he distributed fish guts in the garden. “Don’t take it all,” he said. “I’m supposed to plant this stuff.” Thyssa thought she heard the creak of an old hinge, clucking, snapping. “No I’m not; you’re talking people-talk,” Oroles went on. More creaking. No, not a hinge. What, then? “There’s a ferret under the cart that can do it too. Funny I never noticed it before.” Creak, pop. “All right, if you promise not to steal grain.”
There was more, but Thyssa first investigated the cart. A dark sinuous shape streaked away nearly underfoot to find refuge in Panon’s woodpile; there had been a ferret hiding there! Thyssa crept to the edge of the smokehouse, spied Oroles dividing his offal between the dirt and a raven that was half as large as he. Neither seemed to fear the other. If she hadn’t known better, Thyssa would have sworn the two were actually exchanging the polite gossip of new acquaintances. But the boy didn’t seem to be in danger, and he had few enough playmates. Thyssa tiptoed back to her work, waved the flies away, and chose another fish from the pile.
Presently Oroles returned, searched around the ca
rt, then began to string fillets onto withes. “I wonder if the shaman is sick in the head,” he said.
“Not he,” Thyssa laughed. “Why would you think that?”
“He keeps squatting at his window, running back to leap into bed when servants appear, going back to the window,—you know,” Oroles said vaguely.
Dirrach’s chamber upstairs in the castle faced the dawn, away from Panon’s cottage. Oroles would have had to climb a tree to see such goings-on. “Your little bird told you,” said Thyssa.
“Quite a big one,” Oroles insisted, as a raven flapped away overhead. Thyssa felt the boy’s forehead. Such behavior was not at all usual for Oroles.
* * * *
Dirrach did not step outside his chamber until he spotted Bardel near the vineyards with the outlanders. The shaman had retired from the feast with complaints of a gripe in his belly, fully expecting to wake to the sweet music of lamentations from servants. Told of Bardel’s vineyard tour, Dirrach suspected a ruse; continued to fake his illness; told himself that Boerab must go next. Dirrach knew the poison had gone into the flagon, had seen Bardel swill it down.
Maybe the fool had thrown it all up soon after Dirrach took his leave. Yes, that had to be the answer. The only other possibility was some inexplicable miracle. Well, there were other paths to regicide. One path would have to be chosen while the outlanders were still available as suspects.
At the noon meal, the king glowed with health and camaraderie. “Try some more stew, Dirrach; just the thing to settle your innards.”
“Aye, and to bank your fires for negotiations,” Gethae put in. “Bardel wouldn’t hear of serious talk while you were indisposed.”
“Bardel was nearly indisposed himself, this morning,” Averae grunted. Noting Dirrach’s sudden interest, he continued: “Set your entrails right before your king runs out of luck.”