Wizards: Magical Tales from the Masters of Modern Fantasy

by Gardner Dozois

  And with no more contemplation than that, he climbed down the crag on the side toward the Mitheroad, and did not even pass through the village, still less come near the family farm, on his way through the meadows and fields and woods. He came to the Mitheroad just as it began its last ascent over the Mitherkame, and ran easily up the grassy path.

  Only when he stood at the very spot where he had seen the wagon did he stop and look back toward Farzibeck. Runnel had never been to this place before, and had never looked at his village from so far away. It took him a considerable time even to find it. As for his family’s farm, it was just a brown lump of a hovel in the midst of a meadow. In a week or so, Father would start to break up the earth with his son-drawn plow, and then the meadow would disappear, and bare earth would take its place. But right now, the farm looked no different from countless meadows and clearings. It was as if all their work there amounted to nothing.

  I’m hungry, thought Runnel, and he turned away from the vista to search for wild onion and crumbleroot. It was standard spring fare, to help eke out what was left of the winter stores, but of course the travelers now moving along the road would have taken much if not all of the scavengeable food.

  Yet he found plenty to eat, as soon as he started to look, and wondered if this was because crumble and onion grew so thick that it outgrew the travelers’ taking, or because the travelers were laboring so hard to get up and over the pass that they did not think of food when they came to the crest.

  Or maybe they disdained the biting onion and the bitter crumble. Many did. Mother would add them to the stew in spring, and even though Runnel thought they added a delicious tang, some of his brothers complained that they poisoned the whole thing and made them want to vomit. They never did vomit, however, and Mother got them to eat without complaint by saying that crumble was medicinal and would make better swordsmen of them. How they laughed at Runnel, when he was little, for asking when they would start practicing with their swords, now that they had eaten the stew with crumble in it.

  Runnel dug up five good-sized crumbleroots and a dozen small onions, used grass to wipe off the dirt as best he could, and then made a basket of his shirtfront in order to hold them. Tying the shirt closed brought it well above his waist, so his middle got cold in the nippy air, even though it was high noon. But better to be cold than hungry, for vigorous walking would make him warmer and hungrier by day’s end. He’d feel foolish, perhaps, if nightfall brought him to a place with plenty of food to scavenge; but better to carry food he didn’t need than to be without it in some lonely stretch of unfamiliar wood, where he would not know which berries and mushrooms were safe to eat, and so have to spend the night with nothing in his belly.

  The other side of the pass showed him a world not much different from the side he lived on, except that the peaks in front of him were lower than those behind. As the day wore on, and he walked down one slope and up another, the peaks ceased to be snow-covered. Finally, the road stopped being a track in the thick grass of an endless meadow and became a wide, flat, and gravelly ledge cut from the hills by the labor of men, flanking a stream deep and swift enough that it might have been a river, had there been room enough for one in the narrow valley. The water tumbled around boulders and roared over short but savage falls, so Runnel stayed well clear of the road’s edge, for he had no fear of falling from rock, but this water had power that he did not understand.

  No wonder the great mages drew their power from water. It was mighty in a way that the mountains could never be. For the water might be smaller, but it was vigorous, while the mountains always seemed to be resting or even asleep. What good was it to be a giant if you never stirred, while small waters raced across your body, cutting canyons in your stony flesh?

  And yet it was the mountains that he loved, the roughness and hardness of their bones where they protruded from the soil, and it was the water that he feared. How silly to fear the thing for which you were named, he told himself. I wish they had named me Cobble or Pebble or Rock or Boulder or Crag or Ledge or any other word referring to stone. Then perhaps Father would never have beaten me, for what man would dare to strike stone?

  He came to a place where the road veered away from the river and went up and over a hill. But he could hear a roaring sound and had to see, so he left the road and climbed the rocks high above the river until he came to a place where the rock simply stopped.

  It was like the edge of one world and the beginning of another. Here he was, as he had always been, in the hard high stoneland of the Mitherkame; there, far below, was a land of soft greens and rolling hills, surrounding the Mitherlough, a huge lake that, for all Runnel knew, could have been the great Sea itself, where Skruplek the Sailor had all the adventures that were told about on winter evenings when the short days left them in darkness long before they were sleepy.

  The river flew out from the cliff top and fell into mist that clung like a shy cloud to the cliff ’s face. Beyond, the great expanse of fields was dotted with houses, all of them obviously larger than his family’s hovel; and the villages were far more populous than the few wooden houses of Farzibeck.

  Only after he had been looking for some few minutes did he realize that the rocky mount at the right-hand side of the lake was lined with the stone-and-wooden buildings, right to the crest, and high stone walls rose above the treetops in the wild forest that stretched between him and the Mitherlough. It was the city of Mitherhome.

  He could see now where the road he had been following emerged from the mountains, far to the right of where he stood, winding its way around the forest and down below the lake, as if it meant to miss the city entirely. That was no good to him. Maybe it joined a road that came back up to the city, and maybe it didn’t. But he wouldn’t take the chance. It was the city he wanted, and to the city he would go, road or no road.

  He swung himself over the cliff edge and began climbing down. It was always harder to descend an unfamiliar cliff; his feet had to find gaps and cracks and ledges that his eyes had never seen. But he did all right, and it took him far less time to get to the bottom of the cliff than it would have taken him to follow the road.

  The trouble was that no one else ever used this route, so there was not so much as a path. Which was particularly annoying because the waterfall made so thick a fog at the bottom that he could not see more than a step ahead. But he found a place where a finger of stone spread from the cliff like the root from a tree, and where the stone grew, the trees couldn’t, so he made his way easily for some time.

  By the time the last of the stone finger plunged under the soil, the air was clear again, and he could see. Not that the trees left him much view, they were so thick; but now he could find deer paths and, as long as he kept within earshot of the tumbling river to his left, he knew he would not lose his way.

  Still, it was slow going, and the sun was getting low—no more than two palms above the horizon, he estimated—when he came to the stone wall he had seen from the top of the cliff.

  Now he saw that the wall was in ruins. He had thought the wall rose and fell with the terrain, but instead the land was fairly level, and the stone wall had simply collapsed—or been torn down. There was nowhere near enough stone to account for the gaps in the wall. He could only conclude that people had come here and carted away the huge cut stones that were once part of the wall.

  The sky was red with sunset when he came to the end of his path. For instead of leading him up to the mount where the city perched, as it had seemed from the cliff top, the river took him to an arm of the lake. Across the water he could see there were torchlights in the city and along what had to be stone bridges spanning the gaps through which water poured from the larger lake beyond into this smaller one.

  There was no bridge across this river, though. And Runnel, having never seen so much water, also had no notion of swimming; he knew the word only as something fish and geese did. The water of Farzibeck was too cold, shallow, and swift for anything but a barefoot spl
ash in summer; the rest of the time, they used staves to leap the few streams too wide to step over.

  Knowing he could not go north, he walked south along the edge of the lake and came to a stone tower. This was not in ruins—indeed, it was surrounded by a goat-trimmed meadow, and the wide stone steps that led from the tower down to the lake were swept clean. Yet no light shone from the tower, and when Runnel thought of calling out to hail anyone who might be inside, it occurred to him that he did not know this place, and perhaps the reason that there were no paths in this wood was that the place was forbidden. For now he saw that this tower was a giant version of the small altars that were erected beside every stream in the vicinity of Farzibeck. What else could he have expected? Such large waters cried out for giant altars—for stone towers like this one.

  He realized it was a tower of living stone, all of one piece, as if it had been carved from a natural crag that once stood here—it had not been stacked up from pebbles or cobbles like most little altars.

  Runnel moved on along the lakeshore until he came to a place where the lake poured out onto a tumble of stone and down into a steep-walled canyon. There was no crossing here, either. No wonder the huge stone wall behind him had been left to fall in ruins. What need had Mitherhome of a city wall on this side? No enemy could cross this barrier.

  Yet on the other side of the rapids more walls stood, even higher than the ones he had passed before, though also with ruined gaps, and undefended. Once this city had felt the need of walls despite the water barrier that protected them. Now, though, they did not, or the walls would not be left in disrepair.

  Well, it hardly mattered how permeable the walls beyond this canyon were, for he could not cross it. There was nowhere to go except along its edge to see if it was bridged somewhere.

  As soon as he thought of bridges, he saw that it had once been bridged right here. Runnel could still see, in the waning light, the nubs of the bridge that had once spanned the chasm. As best he could tell, the bridge had been like the tower—all of a piece, not made of piled stone or wood. Yet it had broken somehow, and fallen, and Runnel could imagine that some of the boulders over which the water tumbled in the rapids below had once been part of the bridge.

  It was growing dark. And though it was warmer here in the wide valley of Mitherhome than it had been up in the high mountains, it was still chilly and would get colder through the night.

  And for the first time all day, Runnel thought: What am I doing here? Why have I come? What do I want? I could have been home, warm in the pile of brothers and sisters on the straw floor of our hovel. Not stuck between two rivers and a lake, in an abandoned forest, in sight of ruined walls, with a great city out of reach.

  Even if I get to the city, I have no friends or kin there. No one will owe me a meal or a place by the fire.

  Tomorrow I’ll go back through the forest and climb up the cliff and follow the road home.

  Then he thought of his father beating him for having stayed out a whole night, and for coming home weary and empty-handed. “What are you good for?” his father would ask.

  “Nothing,” Runnel would answer. And it would be true.

  The story of his useless journey would quickly spread, and the girls who already ignored him would despise him. He would have even less honor than the none he already had.

  He could be friendless and cold here as well as anywhere. And tomorrow I’ll find a way into the city.

  He untied his shirt and methodically chewed and swallowed the crumbleroot, adding a bite of onion now and then to take away the bitterness. It was not good food, especially because his own body heat and sweat had made it all just a little soggy. But it filled him. He thought of saving some for tomorrow, but he knew the insects would have it before dawn, and he needed his shirt for warmth. He could go a day or two without food if he had to. He’d done it before, in a long winter, when the older children ate nothing at some meals so the little ones wouldn’t go without. And other times, when he could not face a cuffing from his father, Runnel would skip his supper and ask for no food when he came in late. Nor, on those occasions, had there been some favorite brother or sister who saved him something.

  He hollowed a place for himself among the cold damp fallen leaves near the cliff edge, so he lay on stone, and gathered more leaves to pull on top of himself where he curled on the ground. Others sought soil to sleep on, when they were caught out of doors, but to Runnel, the stone might be cold, but it wasn’t damp, and it never left him sore and filthy the way soil did.

  At this lower elevation it did not get as cold at night. He slept warmly enough that during the night he cast off some of the leaves that covered him.

  In the morning he had nothing to eat, and he could hear few birds through the din of the rapids just over the edge of the cliff. But he had slept well and arose invigorated, and today he did not even think of turning back. Instead he went to the right, mostly southward, skirting the edge of the cliff. The water tumbled farther and farther below, so that even though the ground he walked on sloped downward, it was ever higher above the water.

  He came to a wall, which he recognized as a continuation of the ruined wall he had passed through yesterday. Only this wall was not in ruins, and he could hear conversation; it was manned, and though the guards were careless enough to let their chatter be heard, the fact that anyone was keeping vigil meant that there must be something ahead of him that needed guarding.

  There was no door or break in the wall here, so there was no point in hailing the guards. Instead, Runnel walked along the woods well back from the wall, looking for a gate.

  It was a huge thing, when he reached it, and it was held shut by huge bars. It baffled him: The bars were on his side of the gate. He was inside whatever it was protecting. In the middle of the gate was a small door, which a man would have to stoop to get through. But it had the great virtue of being open.

  Runnel headed for it. Almost at once he was seized by the shoulder and roughly tripped.

  “Where do you think you’re going, fool?” said a soft voice.

  Runnel rolled over and saw a man standing over him, holding a javelin. Not a soldier, though, for the javelin was his only weapon, and he wore only simple cloth. A hunter? “Through the gate,” said Runnel. Where else would he be going?

  “And have your throat slit and all your blood drained into the river?” asked the hunter.

  Runnel was baffled. “Who would do such a thing to a mere traveler?”

  “No one,” said the hunter. “It would be done to a fool of a boy who wandered through the sacred forest, thus declaring himself to be a sacrifice, and a right worthy one, in the eyes of them as still think that water needs blood from time to time.”

  “How would I know it was sacred?” asked Runnel.

  “Didn’t you feel the bones of the dead among the trees? The soldiers who fell here to the bronze swords of Veryllydd still whisper to me—I don’t forget the blood that made this place holy. But the beasts I hunt for the sacrifice are like you—they don’t know it’s a sacred wood. They’re going about their business when I snare them or pierce them.”

  “Are you going to kill me, then?”

  “I was asked for two hares, and so I’ll find hares and bring them. If they asked for a stupid peasant boy from the mountains, then I’d truss you up and drag you in.”

  “All I want is—”

  “All you want is to be another useless adventurous lad from the mountains who’ll make himself a nuisance to everyone in the city until you give up and go back home where you belong. There’s nothing for you here.”

  “Then I am home,” said Runnel defiantly, “for home has always been a place with nothing for me.”

  The hunter smiled a little. “A sharp wit. With that mouth, and that proud look on your face, you’ll probably get beaten to death before you starve.”

  Proud look? How could he look proud, lying on his back in the dirt and old leaves? “Either way,” said Runnel, “I’d like to
spend some of the brief time I have left inside the city of Mitherhome, but all I find is broken walls and broken bridges and rivers I can’t cross.”

  The man sighed. “Here’s what you do if you’re determined to suffer more before you go home. There’s another gate farther along. Don’t go near it. Nor should you go near the four houses that are just inside the gate. Skirt wide around them and go on in sight of the wall till you come to a place where the wall is broken down. Go through the gap, then head straight south till you come to the Uhetter Road. Try to act like you just left the road to take a piss and you’ve been traveling on it all day, instead of traipsing through the holy wood.”

  “Will the road take me into Mitherhome?” asked Runnel.

  “The road will just sit there,” said the hunter. “Your legs will take you to Hetterferry, and from there maybe you will and maybe you won’t figure out a way to get onto the ferryboat and into Low Mitherhome without your miserable country bumpkin rags getting too wet.”

  Runnel was curious. “Why are you helping me?”

  “I’m not helping you. I’m getting rid of you.”

  “But I’ve stepped in the sacred wood.”

  “I live in it. If the spirits of the sacred dead minded your passage, they would have tripped you with their bones or terrified you with their whispers, and they chose not to. Who am I to complain of you?”

  “So you serve Yeggut, the water god, and yet you allow me to live?”

  “There is no water god,” said the hunter kindly. “I’m employed by the priests who put on the sacrifices to please the ignorant people who think there’s a water god. Anyone with even a scrap of sense knows that the watermages do their work, not by praying to some god, but by speaking directly to the water itself.”

  “So…doesn’t that make the water a god?”

  “It makes the water water, and the mages mages,” said the hunter. “Now go away. And don’t even think of asking me for food, or I’ll pierce you after all and let them pour you out to give Holy Yeggut a drink.”