Valdart stood outside, tapping his fingertips on the sides of his folded arms. As she emerged, he started in.
She held him back. “When they finish singing for me, Adventurer. I’ve told you before, remember the pauses. You’ll have plenty of time while they’re settling down again and paying to hear you.”
He shrugged and began snapping his knuckles. She would have been as well pleased to allow him inside early so that she could enjoy both her song and her wait in solitude. Still, she doubted that Torin would leave the audience before the end of the applause.
But they gave her a second song—rare distinction even for a Senior Storycrafter—and while they were still singing, the toymaker came around the pavilion.
He looked at his old friend the adventurer. Valdart looked down, snapped two knuckles over again, looked up once more and met Torin’s gaze with a small grin. Dilys was glad the lanterns hung so high that their three human shadows hovered short on the tentcloth, hidden by the platform from the people inside.
Torin smiled awkwardly and touched the adventurer’s arm. “Good tale-crafting, Valdartak.”
Valdart returned the shoulder clap and ducked inside. Dilys closed her lips against any comment that might hover too near the situation between these two men and the young conjurer. Instead, she moved at a slant into the edge of the forest, Torin following.
A little away from the pavilion and safely private from the dangers of casting shadows on its cloth or being overheard, she leaned against a thick oak. “You missed most of my best tales, Toymaker,” she began in a teasing tone.
“I’ve heard most of them before. But that was a nice touch you added tonight, about the brightwings in Ilfting’s goldentree.”
“You could make it into a new toy.” The sudden idea enthused her. “Ilfting’s grave—a carved hill, perhaps—with shaft and little trapdoor. A little figure of Ilfting to slip into the shaft, and a goldentree to fit into the top of the trapdoor when it’s closed. And a few little brightwings, of course, to move in and out of the branches. With movable wings, maybe.”
“Maybe…someday, not yet.”
She remembered his brother’s sickness, and her proposed toy seemed out of place. “Torin, how serious is it?”
“He’s made us leave him alone for the night.”
Alone—to wait for Thyrna in her role as Havester of Life. The storycrafter took the toymaker’s right hand in both her own. “Torinel.”
“I wonder,” he said, “if magic and toymaking might be combined. If that toy goldentree might drop its own leaves and keep growing new ones, if the little brightwings flew by themselves—”
“Torin, no!”
“You’re right. No judge would ever allow it. Unfair to honest toymakers.”
“He’s been trying to change you again, hasn’t he?” Her voice quivered.
“We can’t be angry, not this time. Think—he sees our family’s tradition dying with him, perhaps tonight.”
She could be angry with High Wizard Talmar, using his weakness to weaken his brother, but she bit back the worst of her annoyance. “Torinel, no. You’re a crafter. Start your own tradition. Your parents had other prentices.”
“Only three, and none of them birth relations.”
“Nevertheless. And wherever she is now, your mother probably has another prentice traveling with her. That’s enough to keep your family’s own style alive, and if it isn’t, better let something die in its own time than force it to stay alive when it’s already returning to its earth.” She pressed his right hand closer. “You’ve climbed too long and too high.”
“But if I’ve been climbing the wrong mountain?”
“There is no wrong mountain, Toymaker.”
He put his left hand on hers so that all of their fingers touched. “Storycrafter, thanks,” he said. But his shoulders still slumped, and as he disengaged his hands and turned away, she wondered how far anyone could help another.
As far, it should be, as anyone could hinder another.
But perhaps the influence of a dying birth sib would inevitably prove stronger than that of a mere friend. The friend aimed for the fellow creature’s individual welfare, but the sibling aimed for the welfare of the family. A family was larger than an individual and older than a friendship. This particular friendship had lasted only ten years, less than one third of either party’s lifetime.
Valdart had been Torin’s friend for more than two thirds of their lifetimes. His counsel might carry more weight, and he might feel all the readier to give it for crafting, since Sharys would be more likely to choose Torin the fellow magic-monger than Torin the toymaker.
But Sharys would probably add her influence to Talmar’s. So might her mother and grandmother—magic-mongers all, and magic-mongers seemed of all students the most eager to swell their numbers in disregard of material poverty. Dilys could not send for Torin’s gnarly old teacher Yarkon: he had met Thyrna last spring. Torin’s mother, Mage Talysidor, might counsel her son to climb his own trail, as she had during his boyhood; but after her husband’s death her journeys had grown longer, farther, and more secret. Thus, Talmar could claim the strength of all the dead or absent family. Added to the strength of his own dying, it gave him great power.
“Oh, Torin,” the storycrafter whispered in the direction he had disappeared, “Climb your own mountain, breathe your own air!”
She slipped back into the pavilion and sat hidden behind the platform, trying to hear Valdart’s storytelling with detached interest. He was not bad. Though his tales depended more on substance than style, the substance was sufficient and the roughness did not detract, might even enhance the matter, as if he were sitting at your table telling you his adventures conversationally. It had an unpolished charm which she half feared marring were he to adopt any suggestions she could offer.
When he descended, she drew him outside. “You deserve that song, Adventurer,” she murmured as they stood listening.
His broad chest swelled, shoulders lifting to make more room for lungs. He displayed his teeth in a full grin and rubbed his strong brown hand over his golden hair. “No suggestions, Senior Crafter?”
His consciousness of his own perfection dissipated the friendly feeling she had just nurtured. Beckoning him to the fringe of woods, she felt much tempted to give him those suggestions, lesson him in how to improve his style. By the time they were far enough from the pavilion to talk easily, however, she had softened herself again. If she tried in her present mood to instruct him, it would be too much like a word-whipping, and for Torin’s sake she needed Valdart’s goodwill.
“Well, Master Storycrafter?” he said, putting hands on hips as he lounged against a tree.
She lounged against another and folded her arms. “How well do you know High Wizard Talmar?”
He shrugged. “Used to tag after us sometimes when we were all saplings, until he lengthened his name and decided he was climbing for higher peaks. Why?”
“This afternoon’s rumors seem to have been well based.”
“Oh.” He had clearly forgotten them in the flux of his performance. She could hardly blame him for that, when she had done likewise.
“Dead?” he went on.
“They left him alone to wait for Thyrna. That was Torin’s news.”
“Oh. Well. Taggish Tal.… Some of them were calling it livecopper madness?”
“Maybe.” Torin had not said and Dilys had failed to ask. She was always failing to ask the obvious. “Livecopper madness would be the kindest explanation. He’s been trying to transform Torin back into another magic-monger.”
Valdart did not miss a breath. “Well, maybe our Torinel always was more magic-monger than toymaker. What rank would he pick up? Magician or even sorcerer, I’d guess.”
“He’s crafted for twenty years!” She included his apprenticeship.
“I’ve adventured for twenty years, and I’m thinking it’s ripe time to change callings.”
“Oh?” said Dilys.
“I’ve seen enough to make a good shopcrafter, or even plant a farm.”
“And of course Sharys would prefer a farmcrafter to a fellow magic-monger.”
Valdart pushed away from his tree. “Aye, Senior Storycrafter, maybe she would. Still a conjurer herself at nineteen—maybe she’d rather raise her children with a crafter than with a fellow student who could have graduated to magician by his fourteenth summer.”
“Valdartak!” said Dilys a little desperately, catching his arm. “Whatever you think—shouldn’t people choose their own trails? If some sibling told you had to settle down now in some shop or farm, or else told you had to go on adventuring…?”
“Aye,” he admitted. “True enough.”
“Adventurer…Valdartak, Torin needs friends tonight. Will you go to him?”
Valdart shook off her hand. “No, I don’t think I will. He came to you with his news. He didn’t wait for me. It’s fairly clear he wants to be alone now.”
This time she let the adventurer stride away. She turned and fingered the bark of the silvertree she had leaned on, trying to sense, as Torin could, the life that was tucking into its winter trance. The air that came out of her lungs felt as cold as when they drew it in. “Yes, perhaps he wants to be alone tonight,” she whispered. “Alone, like his brother. Alone to wait for his own death as toymaker.”
Chapter Three
Judge Alrathe also sat alone that night, pondering.
It was a pity, though understandable, that the high wizard had insisted his globe be carried back with him to his own tent. An old and favorite tool, especially one for which its owner had devised a marvelous new use, must make the best of all deathbed toys. At least, so Alrathe supposed; judges might have individual talismans to help focus their thoughts—a gem, a ring of braided hair, a small toy—but no tool connected of its own nature with their work, so they could only guess at the strength of attachment that grew between magic-mongers, skyreaders, or crafters and the tools of their study or craft. Alrathe had even avoided a thought-focusing toy, preferring a candle flame, or the play of colors and darkness behind closed eyelids.
Nevertheless, the judge would have liked to study that backward-unfolding view of this past afternoon once again. If the toymaker had learned the technique, so might a judge. Torin, of course, was part magic-monger thanks to his family and childhood; but Alrathe was a student, and at least two poets had written that one mark of a good student was versatility. Moreover, it seemed that the globe began its backview from the moment of the gesture, so every hour that went by increased the time one would have to wait for today’s feast sequence. Talmar might have some additional trick for adjusting the time element, but he had not shown it to his brother, and it risked dying with him tonight.
If Talmar died, the problem would become unimportant in his own case, and the likelihood was low that many other cases in future would hinge on what a globe could review. Magic globes were not common outside the homes of magic-mongers. Not all magickers were eager to sell them, and most crafters preferred working by natural light.
Even as Alrathe’s mind digressed to the usefulness or non-essentiality of magic globelight—or so it seemed, though a doze might have intervened—a sudden gleam lit up the crimson tent from outside. It struck the cloth wall facing Talmar’s tent, and seemed to have the quality of double-filtered light; but it faded almost at once. Perhaps it marked the wizard’s harvesting. Or perhaps he had simply illuminated his globe in a moment of delirium.
Alrathe sighed. Talmar’s disease was a case not for judges but for healers. And the eldest healer seemed satisfied it was Choking Glory. To Alrathe, it seemed like simple sensitivity, but Vathilda had not appeared receptive to any suggestion from a judge in versatile mood. Vathilda was not only experienced in her skill, she was treating a fellow magic-monger. And old rumor said that in early youth she herself had stumbled on the Choking Glory; that was why she had never graduated to higher rank than sorceress nor added any syllable beyond the third to her name.
Unlike livecopper madness, which endangered no one except careless magic-mongers, Choking Glory also affected judges and skyreaders, sometimes even crafters and adventurers. In the most painstaking self-examination Alrathe remained an ignorant innocent, unable to remember any personal soul-stubbings on pride, only a few vanities hard to distinguish from desire for neat cleanliness. Still, why should Talmar have fallen to Choking Glory only at First Name-Lengthening and today? He had apparently shown no such symptoms at his graduations to magician, sorcerer, wizard, and then high wizard before the age of thirty-two, the youngest magic-monger of his generation to wear dark azure.
* * * *
Torin found that Hilshar had not only tied his charm across his doorcurtain, she had stiffened the curtain itself. That was unnecessary. It was also suggestive. Magic-mongers stiffened their tent doors to show they did not wish to be disturbed. Other people tied their cords outside the curtain.
Besides, it seemed futile. Whereas the general spell on the Scholars’ Tent made the cloth stiffen again each time, the specific one on the toymaker’s door would dissolve at his touch and not renew unless he renewed it.
Or unless he was already, in his hidden soul, more student than crafter. Once enspelled, magic-mongers’ private doorcurtains responded to their owners’ secret wishes. Sometimes magickers in the beginning ranks, conjurers and magicians and occasionally the younger sorcerers, did not realize their own desire for privacy until they saw their curtains grow stiff. Torin touched his curtain, untied the charm, entered, retied the charm across the doorway, and let the cloth swing back into place.
Was it stiffening again? Not enough moonlight penetrated his tent to see clearly, nor could he tell by feeling, for his touch would redissolve the spell instantly.
He considered his own small magic globe, a First Name-Lengthening gift that he had kept all these years for its light. But this evening he hesitated to use it, and lit a candle instead. Its flickering glow showed his doorcurtain hanging pliable to drafts of air. He clung to that reassurance, but wondered whether his globe would have shown the same result.
He shivered. The day’s fragile autumn warmth had dissolved with the sun. He had taken off his short festival cape about midday and not caught it up when they called him to his brother’s side. His long cloak was in his traveling chest, and Dilys had set his showledge on top of the chest. He looked around and saw that she had left his short cape folded on his bed, where it made a patch of lighter brown. He went and put it on, then peeled up the top blanket and swung it round his shoulders for an overcloak. Half-thinking, he tucked the sheets and lower blanket back into place around the mattress, stuffed yesterday with dry leaves and pinefeathers from the woods around the fairground. He remembered yesterday’s work wistfully.
Feeling too tired to carry his brazier outside, kindle it and wait for the flames to sink into slow emberfire, he knelt beside his chest. His long cloak and both blankets should keep him warm enough for tonight. But he had to lift the showledge down, and it was still laden with toys. He needed a few moments’ rest. He found space between a group of cake trinkets and a family of nested owls to put the candle, warmed his fingers over its flame, sank from kneeling to sitting, and gazed at the showledge.
Dilys had carried it inside very carefully, or else rearranged it after setting it on the chest. Each toy was upright and in place. Perhaps not in the exact place he had originally displayed it, but he had left two merchants examining his goods, and maybe other would-be buyers had come while he was gone. He tried to make mental lists of what Kara and Ulrad should pay him for, tomorrow, by comparing what remained with what he remembered setting out. Eventually he noticed a piece of paper beneath the statuette of Ilfting the Dwarf. After a moment he built enough energy to reach up, lift the statuette, retrieve the paper, and find that Dilys had left him a list of Kara’s and Ulrad’s selections. Not the prices, she could not have known those, but concise descriptions, followed by a note that she had all
owed no one except Ulrad and Kara to take anything away from the ledge, but Merprinel the mirrorcrafter was interested in the necklace of spangles within latticework links all carved from a single length of silverwood, and young Nar wanted the darkring top and one of the stone turtles.
The statuette of Ilfting nodded at Torin. “A good friend, that storycrafter.”
Torin was refolding her list. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to charm you.”
“I suspect she’d like you for a chosen,” Ilfting went on.
“She had long enough to say so.”
“So did you, Son.”
“Not so long,” Torin objected. “Eighteen is very young to marry. My fingers must have slipped when I touched you.”
“Aye, just as our Dilys was making up her mind this spring, you go flittering away around that young conjure rosebud.”
“Shall I correct the mistake?” Torin lifted his hand. It shook with weariness and his fingernails looked dirty. So did his fingers and knuckles, when he squinted at them, as if they were covered with soot, and the skin below abnormally pale. It must be the candlelight. He reached towards Ilfting. “Shall I transform you back?”
“Not yet, Son.” The statuette rapped Torin’s fingertip with one tiny fist that stung like an insect. “Not with a claw in that condition.”
The toymaker retracted his hand and gazed at a droplet of blood bulging up on the fingertip. “I must have left a splinter in you.”
“Like enough. You’re not the crafter you think you are, sapling.”
“I shouldn’t have carved you my old teacher’s face.” In fact, Torin did not think he had been conscious of intending that likeness.
“Carve with the grain, boy.” The statuette rubbed its nose. “Let your wood do what it wants. You try to carve like some glory-choking magicker. Always did and always will.”
“She’s not glory-choking,” said Torin, and frowned because something seemed wrong with his memory. For a moment he had thought it was Sharys who was deathly sick, and Talmar bending over her. No, Sharys and Valdart were together somewhere, Valdart giving her his marriage toy from some distant place, and Talmar was lying alone waiting for the Harvest Spirit. Torin looked around to see whose tent he sat in. And it was Sharys who was eighteen, wasn’t it? Not Dilys…
At Amberleaf Fair Page 3