Wizards: Magical Tales from the Masters of Modern Fantasy

by Gardner Dozois

  His mention of “drink” made Runnel thirsty, but he made no request and walked, then ran, deeper into the wood, away from the wall.

  He worked his way west and stayed far enough away from the next gate that he saw neither it nor the houses the hunter had described. Not much farther, he came to the ruined wall, and followed it till he found a gap. Then he went back toward the south and found yet another gap, which must have been the one the hunter meant, but it made no difference except a few extra steps. Then he reached the corner of the wall where it turned eastward, and here again was a well-maintained tower with guards in it, looking out over the wood. How stupid, thought Runnel, to have a wall that you can simply walk around, and yet defend one short section of it. Are your foes so lazy you can let most of your wall fall down, and they won’t even bother to walk through it?

  Soon he reached the road. There was no one in sight. He stepped out and walked east along the shores of a different stream. This one was shallower and broader—it looked like it could be forded. And sure enough, he soon came to a place where wagons on another road from the south crossed the river and joined the Uhetter Road.

  No one hailed him, though as he neared the wagons he got some suspicious glances. Not wishing trouble, Runnel skirted them widely and ran on ahead, to make it obvious he wasn’t there to steal or beg or whatever it was they feared he’d try. I’ve errands of my own.

  Soon the road ran between houses and shops. From some of the houses came the smell of food, and when Runnel saw that people were going freely in and out of one of them, he concluded it was a roadhouse and he went inside.

  He was stopped at once by a burly man, who said, “Have you got money, boy?”

  Runnel looked around, confused. “What’s a money?” he asked.

  The man laughed nastily and shoved him out. “What’s a money!” he said. “They come stupider and more arrogant about it every spring!”

  So getting a meal would be harder than Runnel had thought. In Farzibeck, any home would open its door to a traveler, and ask no more of him than news or whatever gift he chose to give. Who ever heard of a roadhouse demanding a particular gift—especially one that Runnel had never heard of! How could he have brought a “money” when he didn’t know what it was and had no idea where to find one and couldn’t have guessed in advance that they’d even want such a thing?

  Madness. But from the way other people in the roadhouse laughed at him, he could only conclude that everybody here knew what moneys were, and knew the innkeeper would demand it of them. So it was a city thing, and he would have to find out about it. But not here.

  Not far into the town of Hetterferry, he came to a dock on what looked to be another lake, though not as large as the Mitherlough. He soon realized, from the conversations he overheard, that this was the river called Ronnyrill, which flowed down in three streams from the lake high above, then on to Ronys and Abervery and other strange, exotic-sounding places. Much good that would do him, though. What mattered to him was that the real city of Mitherhome was plainly visible, not more than a stone’s throw away at the nearest point, but the torrent of water pouring out of the deep gash in the cliff made a more impassable barrier than their ridiculous wall.

  When he asked a man about the ferryboat, he once again heard the word “money.”

  “Does everyone here demand the same gift in trade?”

  In reply, the man smiled and reached into a pouch tucked into the sash that bound his shirt closed. He pulled out a single half-blackened disc of bronze. “Money,” he said. “You get it by working, and then you trade it for things you want.”

  “But it’s so small,” said Runnel.

  “So’s your wit,” said the man, and turned away.

  At least now he knew how to get money—you worked. That was something Runnel knew how to do. He walked along the dock till he came to a boat that was busy with men carrying crates onto a large raft. A man was standing by a crate, apparently waiting for one of the other laborers to come and carry the other end with him. So Runnel squatted and put his hands under the crate, and said, “Let’s do it.”

  The laborer looked at him, shrugged, and took up his end. Together they carried it onto the raft, which seemed to Runnel to be as big as his whole village. Runnel stayed with the job for half an hour, working as hard as any of the adult men. But when it was done, everybody else got on the raft and pushed off, leaving him behind. He wanted to cry out to them that all he wanted was to cross the stupid river, what would that cost them? But he knew that they knew what he wanted, and they had chosen to take his labor and pay him nothing, and there was nothing he could do about it. Begging wouldn’t change their minds—it would only invite their scorn. Besides, the men he had helped were hirelings themselves—they were not the men who could have rewarded him with passage. Runnel had been a fool.

  He was very, very hungry now—and thirsty, too. The water of the river didn’t look terribly clean, despite having just come out of the canyon. From the look of it, all the waste of the city was dumped into the Mitherlough above and got carried down in the torrent. So he would need water to replace what he had sweated out.

  Back home, if you needed a drink, you knelt by a brook or runnel somewhere and drank your fill. It was all clean—there was no village upstream of them. And they left it clean—it was a matter of piety not to dishonor Yeggut by polluting the streams that flowed near them. But they had heard from travelers that the sewers of the great cities flowed right out into the water, as if the god were nothing to them. Now, having heard what the hunter in the sacred wood said of the god, Runnel believed the tale.

  That meant he needed to find water from upstream of this town. It would mean leaving again, and it occurred to him that once he set foot on the Uhetter Road he would probably let it carry him all the way back to Farzibeck.

  He took a different street away from the dock, and almost immediately found himself at a public fountain, with water gushing from the mouths of three stone fish into three pools into which women were dipping jars and pails to carry back to houses and shops.

  Grateful for the bounty, Runnel dropped to his knees beside one of the pools and splashed water up into his face.

  Almost immediately, he was once again seized by the shoulder, and once again he was hurled down, though this time he sprawled, not on dirt and leaves, but on the hard cobblestones of the street. A large woman loomed over him, her jar standing on the ground beside her.

  “What do you mean, putting your filthy hands right in the water! And then washing the dust from your own face right back into it for the rest of us to drink!”

  “I’m sorry,” said Runnel. “But don’t you dip your jar in? And isn’t it standing on the ground right now, getting filthy?”

  “But it’s my jar,” she said, “and I only set it down to drag your filthy head out of the fountain.”

  “I didn’t put my head in,” said Runnel.

  “Might as well have! Now get away before I call the guard on you!”

  “I’m thirsty,” said Runnel. “Where else can I get water?”

  “Back in your hometown!” she roared. “Or pee into your hand and drink that!” Then she picked up her jar, made a great show of brushing off the bottom of it, and dipped it into the fountain, her huge buttocks pointed directly at Runnel.

  The stones had bruised him about as well as Father ever did. Runnel knew how to move carefully and slowly until he knew exactly where it hurt most, so he’d know how to get up with the minimum of pain.

  “Are you all right?” asked a young woman.

  “You mean apart from being thirsty, hungry, embarrassed, and bruised?”

  “All right, then, be proud,” she retorted, and carried her jar to the fountain.

  “What did I say?” asked Runnel. “You asked how I was, and I’m thirsty, hungry, embarrassed, and bruised. It was an honest answer.”

  “And still you have that proud look about you,” she said, after a mere glance. “I see you think you’re
better than anyone.”

  “I know that I’m not,” said Runnel. “And if there’s a proud look on my face, Yeggut put it there, not me.” For the first time, Runnel wondered if there was something wrong with his face, and that was why his father hated him.

  The girl’s jar was full. She rocked it up so it stood in the fountain, then turned and faced him, her hands on her hips. She was a girl who worked hard, for her bare arms were muscled and her face was brown. But she was also clean, and so was her clothing. He had never seen a girl in clothes so clean. She must wear it no more than a week without washing.

  “You’re not mocking me?” asked the girl.

  “Why would I mock you?” said Runnel. “You were kindly to me, asking how I was, which makes you the best person I’ve met so far in this place.”

  “You say fair enough words,” she said, “but your face and your voice and your manner still look disdainful. The god was unkind to you. That face should have belonged to a lord or a mage—then no one would mind the proud look.”

  “No one in my village ever told me,” said Runnel. “They must be used to me, having seen this face since I was a baby.”

  “Oh, and you think you’re not a baby now?” she said, with a bit of smile at the corners of her mouth.

  “Now who’s the mocker?” asked Runnel.

  “That’s different,” she said. “You really are small.”

  “I can’t help being young. I’m growing, though—I’m taller than I was. I can work hard. I do what I’m told. I can’t help my face, but I can bow my head and hide it—see?”

  He tucked his chin onto his chest.

  “Couldn’t get much work done in that position,” she said. “But no use asking me for work, I haven’t any such thing in my gift. I’m a servant myself, though not a slave, thank the god, so I get a coin now and then, and the master couldn’t make free with me even if he wanted to, which he’s too old even to wish for, thank the god.”

  “Then let me carry your waterjar for you, and you can let me ask your master for work.”

  “It’s a great household, lad,” she said. “You wouldn’t speak to the master, you’d speak to Demwor, the steward.”

  “The what?”

  “The man who rules the servants, under my master. The man who keeps the counts. The guardian, the—you’ve never heard the word ‘steward’?”

  “There’s not more than three servants in my whole village, and no house with two of them.” Runnel thought of each of them, all of them old, and belonging to houses once headed by men who went off to the wars and came home rich. They had been captured by the men’s own hand as spoils of war, which made them slaves by the decision of the gods. Now the men were long dead, and the servants were old, and hardly anybody cared that they weren’t free. The only reason Runnel knew was that when he was little, he asked why one of them had never married, and then the whole business of servants was explained to him, and the other two were pointed out as well.

  And here he was, volunteering to be a servant himself. Only, like this girl, he intended to be one who was free, and made a—what was the word? A coin now and then.

  “If you drop the jar, I’ll be beaten for it, free or not,” she said. “And no payment for you—I have no coin to spare. Nor kisses neither, in case you thought.”

  “What?” he asked, dumfounded.

  “In case,” she said. “You claimed not to be a baby anymore.”

  “I wouldn’t just…why would I?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “And here I thought you weren’t really proud,” she said.

  “I didn’t mean…” And then he gave up and hefted the jar out of the water. It was heavy. They never used such large jugs in Farzibeck, but that was partly because water was never very far away, and none of the houses used much water, and who could afford a jar this big?

  He hugged it to his belly, and she eyed him critically. “Get a hand more under it in front…yes…no, lower, catch under the edge like…like that. You don’t want it sliding through your arms to land on your feet.”

  “Maybe I should balance it on my head,” said Runnel.

  “You might carry a basket of feathers that way,” she said, “but you don’t have enough of a neck to balance water there. First your neck would break, then the jar.”

  “Can we start moving?” he said. “Because I can’t hold this forever.”

  The nasty woman who had shoved and threatened him had apparently stayed to gossip with other women. Now she saw Runnel carrying the jar, and she called out to the servant girl, “Ho, Lark, don’t you know that fine lordling will take what he wants from you and run away?”

  “They only run away from you, Wesera!” Lark cheerfully called back.

  “Don’t know how she thinks I could run anywhere, carrying this,” muttered Runnel.

  Lark burst out laughing. “You really are fresh from the farm, aren’t you?”

  “Why? What did I say?”

  “No, no, I think it’s sweet that you don’t think that way. You really don’t, do you? And not because you’re too young, either. Now you know my name’s Lark, so what’s your name, since it seems I’m about to introduce you to Demwor and I ought to know it.”

  “Runnel.”

  “Is that because you peed yourself all the time as a baby?” she said. “Or is there watermagic in your family?”

  “I didn’t choose my name,” said Runnel, embarrassed and a little angry. “No one mocked me for it where I lived.”

  “I’m not mocking you!” said Lark. “I’ve just never—it’s the kind of name a man takes when he’s joining the service of Yeggut. The kind of name watermages give their children.”

  “Half the children in Farzibeck have water names,” said Runnel. “It shows that your parents are waterfolk.”

  “It’s a good name. It’s just that in Mitherhome they go more for ancient names or trade names or virtues. I’m not from here, either—my family farms to the east of here, and northward. I was named for a meadowbird that my mother loves to hear singing. So you can be named for a brook, and it’s no shame. I was just surprised.”

  “Then let’s agree never to mock each other,” said Runnel, “so that even if it sounds like it, or looks like it, we’ll both know that no harm is meant.”

  “If Demwor hires you, which is unlikely, and if we have occasion to see each other again—also unlikely—then yes, I agree, I won’t mock you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “To your face, anyway,” she said. Only she was grinning in a way that said that indeed no harm was intended.

  I’m going to hide my face from everybody, thought Runnel. And my name. People find the one offensive and the other ridiculous. And I had to come all these miles to find out about it.

  They walked in silence for a little while. Then Runnel could not contain it. “What’s wrong with my face?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “You’re not handsome, you’re not ugly.”

  “What makes you say I look proud?”

  “Well it’s the whole thing. The expression.”

  “What about the expression?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, sounding exasperated. “You just do. Like you’re a statue.”

  “What’s a statue?”

  “How can I explain it if you—a statue is made of stone or metal or clay, and it shows a person’s face, only it doesn’t move, it just stays exactly the same.”

  “I move my face. I talk. I smile. I move my eyes. I nod.”

  “Well, stop doing it, or you’ll drop the jar.”

  “Did you have to fill it completely full?”

  “Do you want me to carry it now?”

  He would not have a girl carry something because he could not. “I can do it.”

  “You want to know what’s wrong with your face? I’ll tell you. Right now you were annoyed with me—for filling it so full, then for offering to carry it. But nothing showed in your face. You moved your mouth, you moved your eyes, but you didn’
t show anything you were thinking. It looks like you think you’re better than me. Like you don’t have to bother feeling anything about me.”

  “Well, I was annoyed. I can’t help what my face shows.”

  “And you’re annoyed now, and it still doesn’t show.”

  Runnel made a monstrous face. “How about now?”

  “Now you’re ugly. But it still doesn’t look like you mean it.”

  It was a shocking thing to learn about himself. “Why didn’t anybody ever tell me?”

  “Probably because they thought you were proud and didn’t like them, so why should they tell you anything?”

  “So why are you telling me?”

  “Because I saw you knocked in the dirt by Wesera, and you looked thirsty and miserable. Your face looked proud, so I thought that meant you had spunk. Now you say you aren’t proud, so that must mean you don’t have spunk, so…no, we said no mockery, so…I believe you. I believe you can’t help it. But you know what helps? Ducking your head. Makes you look humble. Hides the stiffness. Do that a lot, and people won’t want to slap you around.”

  “Do you want to slap me around?”

  “Two answers to that. No, because you’re carrying my water for me. And no, because I don’t care enough to slap you, and I’m never going to, so if that was your first test to see if you could get close to me—”

  He was sick of her assumption that he had some interest in her like that. So he walked faster and moved briskly ahead of her.

  “Watch out, slow down!” she shouted. “You’ll drop it, you’ll break it, you’ll spill it!”

  Water was sloshing and splashing, so he did as she asked, and she was beside him again.

  “So you don’t like me,” she said. “I get it.”

  “I like you fine,” he said. “You helped me. I just don’t want anything from you except a chance at a job so I can get some of these moneys or coins or whatever you call them. And maybe, just maybe, a drink of this water after we get it to wherever we’re going.”

  “Well, that would be now, because we’re here.” She led him to a doorway in a large, high stone wall.

  She stopped outside the door and whistled—a bit of birdsong, it sounded like. She grinned at him, and said, “Lark.”