The Magician of Karakosk, and Other Stories

by Peter S. Beagle

  They came near to missing the inland road, because of the weather; it was Lal who noticed the wagon ruts halfcovered in snow. They halted the churfas and faced each other across the wind for a long time. The old man said finally, “You know, the boy may turn out to be no fisherman after all. We may yet have to go back there and rescue him again.”

  “Good-bye, Soukyan,” the old woman said. “Go well. Help Choushi-wai with her reading.” She tugged Butterfly’s right ear, and the great creature dutifully began to turn back toward the coast road.

  Behind her an outraged silence, and then a bellow, “And that is it? That is all? After forty years?”

  Without turning her head, she called, “I told you—it’s just one good-bye too many.” Butterfly slogged on.

  She kept a vow to herself not to look back; she had even begun to sing, as a distraction from sleet and confusion. Consequently, she almost fell off Butterfly when Soukyan appeared on foot in her path, gripping the churfa’s jaw, and shoving his free arm into its mouth to forestall a scream of alarm.

  “Get down,” he said flatly, the effect spoiled only somewhat by his being out of breath. She dug her knees into Butterfly’s sides, but the churfa only growled and remained planted where she was. Soukyan said, “Lal.” The snow that had muffled his running footsteps was in his hair, turning it as white as hers.

  “Ah, damn,” she said at last, and slid to the ground. She stumbled on a patch of ice as she landed, but he caught her. They held one another tightly for a long time, grumbling inaudibly into shoulders and noses and the sides of throats. The wind slackened a little, but the snow went on falling, and still they stood together. The second churfa joined them for company, making plaintively flatulent sounds.

  “I feel like that boy,” she said, “like Riaan. Finding his father, losing his father, seeing the ocean for the first time. It’s too much for me, Soukyan. Let me go, please.”

  The old man stroked her wet hair. “We might yet fetch up in the same lockup one more time. You don’t know.”

  She pulled back to look directly into the twilight eyes. “Yes, I do. This time I do know. Good-bye, Soukyan. Good-bye, good-bye.” She kissed him with the innocent ferocity of a young girl, and then she was up on the churfa again, saying, “Sunlight on your road,” over her shoulder, as though they had shared nothing more than a meal, a stretch of road, or a single night.

  “And on yours.” Butterfly was already lumbering toward the coast road. He raised his voice to call after her. “At least you know where to find me. If you should need me.”

  “Oh, I will always need you.” A sudden gust of snow hid her from him almost instantly, but the wind blew her words back clearly. “There’s the plain bloody aggravation of it.”

  He did not stare after her, having made his own private vow; though he did hold the churfa steady for a moment after he mounted, thinking that he could still hear her singing. “Sour the milk, it would,” he said very loudly. “Only a churfa could ever love that music of hers.” The beast belched at both ends, and he grimaced, and then grinned, stretching his cold face painfully. “Right. Move your stinking old self, then—it’s a long way home for everybody. We ought to be seeing farmhouses in a few hours. Move, so.” The churfa shambled forward, and the mists closed around them.

  CHOUSHI-WAI’S STORY

  Attend, attend! Remember to pray for the poor, beloved of the gods, and remember to pray for the gods, who have no friends but the poor. Attend to me, the inbarati Choushi-wai, daughter of the S’dif clan, attend the tale of Tai-sharm and the Singing Fish, as I had it from Lalkhamsin-khamsolal, who had it from Sulij herself, who had it in turn from the great Vaivolkar, and she from Ti’hadri. I, Choushi-wai, tell it to you now.

  Well, and so. In the longest-ago, even in the time before the mountains fell down, when mighty lords ruled realms far greater than the handful of villages that we call a kingdom today, there reigned a king in Baraquil who was growing old with neither a wife to grow old at his side, nor child to care for them both. And this troubled him not at all, for he was a silent man, and much enjoyed his solitude. Yet his Chief Minister reminded him ever more constantly that to die with no heir was to invite chaos, and the King in time reluctantly agreed that this was so. Therefore he bade the Chief Minister to go forth in the land and choose him a wife, but not to make too much haste about it. “For I do this for the tranquility of my country only,” he said, “and not through any lust or longing of my own.”

  And the Minister then said to him, “This is well understood, Gracious Majesty—but will you not say how you would prefer your queen to be? Will you have her merry or somber? Wanton or coy? Self-willed or tractable? Maddeningly beautiful or comfortably plain? Shall she be of the high old blood, or of the later-come nobility? A king desirous of marriage must consider such matters carefully, my lord.”

  The King answered him shortly, saying, “I am not desirous of anything save being left in peace—yet, if it must be, then by all the gods’ grubby necks find me a woman of some intelligence, able at least to carry on a human conversation at mealtimes. The rest is for you to judge; one’s very like another, take or leave a bosom, or an ankle, or a trick of the light. Go away now.”

  So the Chief Minister left him and began his search for the woman who was to be queen, and Queen Mother after. And it must be fairly told that the Minister sought a bride for his lord as zealously as though he were an honest man. Which he was not; for he said to himself, “Be she ever so wise, ever so subtle, ever so learned, what shall it avail her against me? When he is gone, she and the little one will be under my hand, and through them may I not govern as I choose?” Whenever he encountered a woman he deemed would suit both himself and the King, he had her brought straightway to the palace, whether she would or no. And always the King had her to breakfast, and sometimes dinner, and so safely on her way home by suppertime, and everybody much relieved except the Chief Minister. Yet he went on combing the realm, moving among high and lowly alike, in dutiful pursuit of an intelligent queen.

  Now in those times, in a high, cold, flat eastern corner of the kingdom, famed for nothing but cheese and wild honey, there lived a certain woman named Sharm and her daughter, who was called Tai-sharm, which is how girl children are named to this day in that country. A son will have a name of his own, but a daughter shares her mother’s name, and Tai-sharm was well satisfied with this. Indeed she was proud of it, for she admired her mother greatly, and she had never known her father. She worked their shred of land side by side with Sharm every day, from the first moment they could see the earth they plowed until it grew too dark even to distinguish the weeds and stones they knelt to grub up. At the age of seventeen years, her small hands were as strong and worn as her mother’s hands, with dirty, broken fingernails like hers, and her knees and elbows and her bare feet were as hard as rishu-horn. And Tai-sharm was proud of these things also.

  Of her looks she knew nothing; and how should she have known, say we who live yet as Tai-sharm lived then. Like us, she had never seen her face reflected in anything but a thick brown puddle where her eyes and teeth appeared the same color as those of any other village child. She washed herself when she thought of it, and when there was water to spare from beasts and crops; and she always combed the dusty tangles out of her hair on every market day. When her one badrique—such as women there wear still—fell to tatters, her mother would weave another. So she worked and she slept, and she ate, and she worked, and she was Tai-sharm.

  Yet to this Choushi-wai must add something more, something that Tai-sharm would never have told you. Tai-sharm believed in her soul that she was a stupid woman. “Stoneskull,” “lackwit,” “echohead”—those were some of the names she’d taken to herself since she was quite small. Who can say where she came by such a notion? Never from old Sharm, who was her most adoring companion. Children demand impossible things of themselves in secret; only they know why. Sharm grieved and stormed, and gave over storming, and never understood.

&nb
sp; She took a fierce, cunning care of her daughter, old Sharm did, understanding as bleakly as any what can become of a peasant girl unlucky enough to catch the eye of some little lordling. Yet she did not disfigure Tai-sharm, as many such mothers have done; preferring to do what she might to keep her grimy and ragged and hidden away from strangers. At the first word of the Chief Minister’s coming, she sent Tai-sharm into the hills to study with her uncle Rynn, who was a Smith and a navdal as well, able to put his hands on an animal and listen to its illness. Truly, when the Minister finally found his way to their village, he never should have met Tai-sharm at all.

  Yet when a thing is set and bound to be, how shall anyone hold it back? So it happened that Rynn himself fell ill, and was tossing in bed, all a-fevered and delirious, when Tai-sharm came there. Well tended, he was, by his wife and his two sons; so what was for Tai-sharm to do but see those three properly fed, and then kiss her uncle’s sweated forehead and trudge the miles home to her mother? And to arrive at one end of the lane leading to their tiny hut just as the Chief Minister and his retinue turned in at the other? Tell me now, how shall such determination be held back?

  Well, and so. What did Tai-sharm see then, meeting the Minister at her mother’s door? Choushi-wai tells you that she saw a tall, pale, heavy man with a soft mouth and bright little eyes like nailheads. The trailing hem of his yellow robe of office was spattered with mud, and worse, but for that the Chief Minister cared nothing, having seen Tai-sharm. What he observed was a small person with black, black hair and skin the shade that water turns at dusk; a person who looked at him out of eyes the size and shape and color of the mardou figs that grow in this very courtyard. She was not beautiful, that person, in any of the Twenty-seven Recognized Ways; but if the Minister was not an honest man, he was not a fool either, and he bowed as deeply to Tai-sharm as his rank and his belly would permit him. He said to her, “Good madame, my salutations. Your pardon, but it may well be that the gods have sent me here to meet you.”

  Now Tai-sharm had never been called madame in her life; nor for the matter of that, had she ever seen a Chief Minister, no more than anyone here. The only robe of office she recognized was the shabby scarlet feast-day vestment of the village’s one priest. More, she disliked the soft, mealy look of the Minister’s attendants. Pausing warily therefore on the threshold of her mother’s house, she gathered her faded shawl around her shoulders and pertly answered the Chief Minister, “Sir, in that case the gods must have even less sense of direction than your venerable self. Surely they meant to guide you to a proper city like Cheth na’Bata, or perhaps Sarn, where there are ladies who will understand such talk. As for me, there’s work and supper waiting,” and she made to pass him and enter the hut.

  But the Chief Minister filled the doorway, smiling, saying, “My child, tell me your name.”

  Tai-sharm was tired from her long tramp. She said irritably, “I am no child of yours but Tai-sharm, daughter of Sharm. Let me by, silly man.”

  “Ah, better and better.” The Minister fondled his smooth round chin. “Tell me then, Tai-sharm, what is the name of this village?” For he had no more notion of that than we do, or than the Queen in Fors na’Shachim has of ours, and well for us, oh indeed, well for us.

  “Name?” It is said that the sound of Tai-sharm’s laughter was like the soft chiming of the first spring rains. “Now surely it has as many names as it has dwellers—we call it here, or we call it this place, or we call it home. Each of us calls it whatever suits him, but we all know where it is. How else should it be with us?”

  Then the Minister smiled again, and he put another question to Tai-sharm. He asked her, “And who is the king of this realm?”

  “The king?” Tai-sharm laughed at him a second time. “Old man, here there is no king but the wind, no king but the locust, no king but the dry well. How else should it be with us?”

  “How else indeed?” murmured the Chief Minister, as though in deep converse with himself. “Tell me one thing more, Tai-sharm, who is no child. Tell a silly man your heart’s truest desire.”

  “To see a fish,” answered Tai-sharm, without a moment’s hesitation. “Not an old dried fish, such as they sell in the market, but one alive and swimming and all different colors.” It is told that she smiled so tenderly at the very thought that for one single moment the Chief Minister wished her for himself. And who knows what ending there might have been to this tale, had not old Sharm heard the voices and come to investigate. She knew a yellow robe, if her daughter did not, and she scolded the girl roundly for her inhospitality. “Please to come in, lord,” she said. “Your servants likewise.” What she’d have done if they had, the gods in their mystery know, for the hut was crowded enough with her and Tai-sharm. But the Minister briefly bade his attendants wait outside, then courteously bent his head to stoop through the door of Tai-sharm’s home.

  There they are, then, see them: dark, ragged Tai-sharm, her little mother—a true “born-bent,” as the folk there call themselves—sitting with the King’s Chief Minister at the table made from a broken cartwheel, with the Minister’s knees nudging his chin and Sharm serving him mug on mug of spiced spidergrass tea, and pressing him to try yet another of her dry quiqui biscuits. He spoke hardly a word to Tai-sharm then, but bent all his cunning toward cozening her mother with accounts of his royal master’s vast wealth and his noble heart, his goodness and loneliness. He was a wondrous fine talker, that Minister was.

  Old Sharm was casting side-glances at Tai-sharm and prodding her foot under the table before he was halfway done. Tai-sharm took no notice, but only sat gazing at the Chief Minister’s left shoulder, and what she thought was what she thought. The Minister still paid her no seeming mind, but began to confide in Sharm the difficulty of gratifying the King’s preference for intelligence in his bride. “For one sort of wit may reveal itself in the wild deeps of philosophy, look you; a very different sort through the slide and chime of words one on another; yet a third in the wisdom needed merely to survive one wretched day more.” Old Sharm nodded morosely at this. The Minister said, “And there must be as many more varieties, I doubt not, as birds in the air, insects in the grass, sycophants at court. Good mother, of your own country wisdom say, what would you do in my place to determine the precise cast of thought most suitable to my master’s whim? I will abide your judgment.”

  Now see old Sharm, see her rocking back on her rickety chair, lifting her hands to slap them down on her thighs, then leaning forward until she’s knobby nose to high, thin nose with the Chief Minister, beginning to whisper loudly to him, “Well, my lord, there’s no mother but knows her daughter a match for the highest, true? I don’t mind saying that when it comes to plain sense—sense, aye, and true cleverness as well—your king could go a long way and fare worse than my girl—”

  But Tai-sharm was on her feet like that, almost toppling the table, her face gone tight and patchy-pale and older than her mother’s face. “No,” she said. “No, no more of this! I know what I am, and I don’t mock and I won’t be mocked.” Then she ran out the door and down the lane, the King’s Chief Minister left gaping across a rocking cartwheel table at a gaping, stub-toothed peasant woman, each one of them silent as the other. See them so, just as Choushi-wai sees.

  “Eigh, dear,” old Sharm sighed at last. Shamefaced, she swiped the grimy back of her hand across her mouth, then mumbled behind it what we already know—that Tai-sharm, from childhood, had always believed herself an imbecile. “Praise that quick, canny head,” Sharm lamented, “and she’ll swear you’re making game of her, always; call her so much as shrewd, never mind clever, and the girl’s at your throat or running off to wail all night in the barn, as she’ll do now.” She rubbed her mouth again, belched, apologized. “Eigh, dear—well, there it is, there it is. You’ll not be interested in her for your king now, I don’t suppose?”

  “Ah, mother, I fear not,” says the Minister sadly. And he fended off another quiqui biscuit and took his leave.

  Bu
t that same night, hours after Tai-sharm had finally whimpered herself to sleep, snuggled against the warm flank of her mother’s one rishu, the minions of the Chief Minister flowed into the barn as soundlessly as the cold mist through the gaps in the walls. Tai-sharm came awake already bound and swaddled, thrown into a saddle and bumping on her way to the king whose name she did not know. Old Sharm never missed her until milking time.

  Now it was never the Chief Minister’s custom to accompany a new bridal prospect to the palace. Leaving that to his servants, he would be off elsewhere in the land, doggedly seeking out yet one more likely consort for his master. This time alone he rode by Tai-sharm’s side day and night, and whether she cursed him or demanded her freedom or refused to speak at all, he chatted blithely along, telling her of all the wonders of Baraquil, and of the King’s great victories in battle, of his learning and his simple wisdom. Twice Tai-sharm slipped her bonds and bolted in the middle of his prattle, and twice she was quickly retaken. The Chief Minister merely waited for her to be brought back to him, and calmly went on praising his master’s virtues. Truly, he was a patient man, Choushi-wai tells you this.

  Often he said to Tai-sharm, “My servants and I have tried our best to treat you gently and honorably. If we have injured you in the least, it was unintended, and I hope most earnestly that you will not bear it against us when you are Queen.”

  And each time Tai-sharm would answer him coldly, “No fear of that, since I will never be anyone’s queen. Your troubles will begin when the King realizes what a dolt I am. He sent you to find a clever woman to keep him company at his breakfast, and you have returned with a fool. He will not be pleased.”

  “Ah, child,” the Chief Minister would purr then, “who knows what pleases a king, or for how long? By the time we arrive he may well have decided to be enchanted with foolishness, and there you will be.” But once he looked hard into her eyes in a different way and asked sharply, “I think you are feigning this faith in your own stupidity. In four days’ acquaintance I have seen nothing slow or unintelligent about you. However could you come to believe such nonsense about yourself?”