by K. J. Parker
They were all substantial-looking types, wearing some pretty fancy clothes – lots of velvets and heavy silks, the men as well as the women – but they didn’t look like the sort of people you’d expect to see gathered around a royal dining table. In fact, they looked more like bandits or pirates or the men who hold horses for money outside theatres and brothels. Or soldiers, of course. But their appearance didn’t seem to be bothering him unduly, which suggested that he’d had a drop or so to drink already (and a vicious twinge of heartburn went a long way towards corroborating that theory).
‘Now then,’ someone said, ‘we’ve all had a nice dinner and a nice drink. How about the entertainment?’
That was a popular suggestion; all the villainous-looking men were shouting and banging their cups on the table; the women were trying to be a little bit more refined, so they just clapped and cheered. If anything, they looked marginally rougher than the menfolk.
‘Well?’ someone said, looking at him. ‘How about it?’
Well indeed, he thought, why not? Naturally he had no idea what the entertainment would turn out to be, though if he had to hazard a guess he assumed it’d be either fire-swallowers or young ladies with very few clothes on. But he had no deep-rooted objections to either category; and since the decision seemed to rest with him, he nodded. That made everyone very happy indeed, and a lot of perfectly good wine ended up soaking away into the tablecloth.
After a few bumps and thuds off stage, eight men in overstated livery brought in two large wooden frames (like window frames without glass or parchment). Inside each frame a human being was stretched like a curing hide, hands and feet pulled tight into the corners. One of them was a woman, and she looked familiar; he thought for a moment, and the name Copis came into his mind, though he couldn’t fit a context to the name. The other was a man, and he was familiar too – in fact, he’d seen him a few moments before, in his first dream: he was one of the two monks (Monach, he remembered, and Poldarn) but offhand he couldn’t recall which one. Both of them were naked and dirty and thin, with rather disgusting ulcers and sores on their ribs and shins. Their heads had been recently shaved, which was a blessing – there were few things more likely to put a man off his food than the sight of matted, greasy hair – and their eyes and mouths were red and swollen. If this is what passes for entertainment in aristocratic circles, he decided, I don’t think much of it.
The men in livery lugged the frames up onto a raised dais on the right-hand side of the room – they tripped, dropping the woman, which caused a great deal of mirth around the table – and someone passed ropes over hooks in the ceiling beam. From these they hung the frames, securing them at the bottom with more ropes passed through rings set in the floor. The presence of these rather specialised fixtures suggested to him that this performance, whatever it might turn out to be, was a regular event. Personally, he’d have preferred a string quartet or the ladies with very few clothes, but obviously the customs of the royal court overrode his personal tastes.
Once they’d finished fastening the ropes, the servants got out of the way in a great hurry; which turned out to be a sensible move on their part, because the company around the table were busily arming themselves with missiles of every sort, from soft fruit to the chunkily vulgar wine goblets. The barrage they let fly was more vigorous than accurate. Most of their projectiles banged and splatted against the wall rather than against the poor devils in the frames; but such was the volume of missiles that inevitably a proportion found their mark. He saw the man’s head knocked sideways by a goblet, splattering the wall behind with wine or blood or both. Two of the men in the middle of the table were having a contest, to see who could be the first to land a napkin ring on one of the woman’s breasts. Other diners were throwing spoons and knives. He wasn’t sure whether he ought to join in; he didn’t really want to, so he kept his hands folded in his lap and just watched instead.
It wasn’t long before the table was stripped bare. The ebony crow had been the last missile to fly; it had been claimed by a tall thin man with a very long beard, who took a long time over his aim and managed to catch the woman square in the ribs with considerable force. The thin man got a good round of applause for that, and it was hard, in all conscience, to begrudge it to him.
Well, he thought, that was rather childish, but I guess it does them good to let off steam after dinner; and presumably these two are wicked, antisocial types who’ve done something to deserve it. It was impossible to tell just by looking at them what their particular malfeasances might have been. Anybody who’s been locked up in prison and starved for a month or so will inevitably come out looking guiltily wretched, whether they were locked up for infanticide or stealing clothes from the public baths. He wasn’t sure he approved of the proceedings, at that; but he was a stranger here and didn’t know the score, so who was he to pass judgement?
After the last missile had been thrown there was a general round of cheering, mixed with shouts for more wine (and more cups). When these basic needs had been provided for by the impressively efficient table-servants, one of the men down at the far end of the table called out, ‘Get on with it!’ Everybody laughed and cheered, and two men appeared from the direction they’d brought the frames in from. They were clearly very serious men indeed; they were dressed in military uniforms, with gleaming black boots and white pipeclay belts, immaculate red tunics and breastplates whose metallic gleam hurt the eyes, especially after a drink or two. One of them was carrying a long stick like a broom handle, and the other a long knife with a curved thin blade.
The man with the knife stopped, right-wheeled, saluted him and said, ‘By your leave, sir.’ That caught him offguard, but he heard himself say, ‘Carry on, sergeant,’ so that was all right.
The sergeant turned to the man stretched in the frame and wiped a section of his midriff clean of fruit pulp and wine dregs. Then he pinched a fold of skin near the solar plexus and carefully inserted the point of the knife, working it in with the skill and concentration of a high-class surgeon. Once he’d made his incision he pushed the knife in an inch or so – he was taking care not to puncture any of the internal organs – and drew it down in a straight line, slitting the skin like a hunter paunching a hare. He tucked the knife into his belt without looking down, then pushed his two forefingers into the incision and gently drew the skin apart to reveal the intestines. His skill and delicacy of touch earned him a round of applause from the diners that actually drowned out the noises the man was making; it was hard to see how the sergeant could keep his mind on his work with such a terrible racket going on, but apparently he was used to it, because he didn’t seem to be taking any notice. Retrieving his knife from his belt he hooked a strand of the man’s stretched gut round his finger and sliced through it. Then he nodded his head and the other soldier handed him the stick, around which he started to wind the severed gut.
I’m not sure I care for this, he thought, though nobody else seems to mind; in fact, they’re lapping it up, and this substantial gathering of important people can’t all be wrong. But he wished, he felt an urgent need to remember, which of the two this one was, Monach or Poldarn; he wasn’t sure why, but he had an idea it was extremely important, if not now then at some point in the future. But, for some reason, he couldn’t see clearly what was going on. It was as though he was being carried further and further away, or his sight was fading, or perhaps this was what happened to your senses when you died; he was a long way from the scene by now, so that the noise was an indistinct blur, screaming and cheering scrambled together, and the people were just shapes melting into a mass of colour, and then nothing.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
He sat up and opened his eyes. The sudden movement disturbed a pair of crows that had settled on the porch rail while he’d been dozing; they spread their wings and lifted up, cawing furiously while they found their balance in the air. Poldarn’s hand reached out for a stone or a cup or something to throw, but he was out of luck. They took their
time leaving, as if they knew they were safe. They sailed away towards the mountain, the tips of their long wings flicking gracefully down at the end of each stroke.
It’s time, he thought. Sitting around here won’t do anybody any good. It’s time we were on our way.
The red glow over the mountain was dawn, and something else as well. He went into the house and woke up Raffen and Asburn with the toe of his boot.
‘We’re leaving,’ he said.
Raffen turned over and scowled at him. ‘Already?’ he grumbled.
Poldarn nodded. ‘The fire-stream’s gained a lot of speed going down the lower slope; it’ll reach Haldersness by noon tomorrow. We’re going to have to take a pretty wide detour because of it, and we can’t take the horses, let alone the trap, so we need to allow an extra half-day to get there; the sooner we start, the better.’
He left them to get ready and went across the yard to the barn. Everything they needed was there, ready where he’d left it; not very much of anything, since they’d have to carry it a long way over difficult ground. He checked it all over one last time, and as an afterthought he added Boarci’s axe to his pile. If everything went right he wouldn’t be needing a weapon – there was no reason why it should come to that – but there was always the risk of a bear, evicted from its territory by the latest eruptions on the mountain, or something of the sort. He hadn’t cleaned the axe properly since the last time he’d used it, and it had acquired a coating of gritty, sticky red rust; but it hadn’t exactly been a thing of beauty to begin with, so who gave a damn?
They got themselves up and ready as quickly as anyone could reasonably expect, but Poldarn’s nervousness had made him irritable, and he wasn’t very polite to any of them. By the time they moved out, nobody was talking to anybody else; the silence was grim and awkward and miserable, but they started at a good pace and kept it up all morning.
At noon they stopped for a brief rest, while Poldarn went on ahead to look at the fire-stream. Nobody had asked him how he’d known all that stuff he’d told them, about how it had picked up speed and had made a longer detour necessary. He had no idea himself – maybe he’d had a vision or the divine Poldarn had appeared to him in a dream – but when he got to the top of the ridge and looked down, he found it all exactly as he’d expected it to be. The fire-stream itself was much wider and longer than it had been, and it was moving at nearly twice its previous speed. A tributary stream had broken out from the main body as it rode over the little crest he’d noticed from Ciartanstead. It was comparatively minor and wouldn’t have the legs to make it over the next crest, but crossing it was nevertheless out of the question; they’d have to skirt round it, and that meant going right down to the terraces at the foot of the mountain. They’d be able to go a little way on the flat, but then they’d come up against a rill in spate that was too fast and wide to ford. The only way round that was to go back up the mountain and get across it while it was still just a frothy white splash falling almost vertically off the rocks. That was going to be a long, tiresome climb; they’d have to rest for at least an hour afterwards; and from there to the old road it wouldn’t exactly be a gentle stroll. All things considered, even with the early start they were going to have to keep up a stiff pace if they wanted to get to where they had to be before nightfall tomorrow.
‘Come on,’ he called out, as soon as he’d rejoined the main party, ‘that’s plenty long enough. We’re going to have to get a move on.’
Elja, who’d taken off her shoes, gave him a scowl. ‘We can’t go any faster,’ she said. ‘I’ve got blisters on both heels as it is.’
‘Then you should’ve worn your boots,’ Poldarn snapped. ‘The fire-stream’s thrown us out more than I’d expected – we’ve got to go right down into the valley, then right up again. There’s no time for dawdling.’
Elja didn’t say anything as she pulled her shoes back on. They were just rawhide moccasins with thin wooden soles, quite unsuitable for scrambling over rocks. He should have checked she was wearing her boots before they’d left, but he’d assumed she’d have had more sense.
The next eight hours were uncomfortable and unpleasant. They were all doing their best to keep up, but little things kept going wrong: knapsack straps broke, Raffen slipped on some shale and turned his ankle over, they tried a short cut that ended up costing them an hour. When it was too dark to see, they stopped beside a little pool under a waterfall and refused to go any further. Poldarn gave in, with a very bad grace. They had something to eat – dry bread and an onion each and went to sleep without exchanging a word.
Poldarn closed his eyes but stayed wide awake. He was afraid of going to sleep, for various reasons – cramp and stiffness, dreams, things like that. The sensible thing would have been to use the time productively, to go over his plans, work out alternative courses of action to meet predictable contingencies, but he couldn’t concentrate. Instead, that wretched song kept jingling through his mind, and he couldn’t keep himself from straining after the words he couldn’t remember—
Old crow sitting on the cinder heap,
Old crow sitting on the cinder heap,
Old crow sitting on the cinder heap—
But the last line wouldn’t come, it was just out of reach in the back of his mind, where he could feel it but not get hold of it. He thought of waking someone up and asking, but even he could see that that wouldn’t be a good idea in the circumstances. So he had to put up with the itch, like a pain in a tooth that had fallen out years ago. The night was dark and starless; he had no way of gauging the passage of time, so that what felt like an hour might only have been a minute. He wondered if death was anything like this, a matter of lying in the timeless dark, straining to remember things that would never come back again.
But although the last line of the verse kept eluding him, he found that as he trawled his memory, other things came up in the net. Mostly they were trivial and he had no idea what they meant – little broken glimpses of himself, random as dug-up potsherds, each bearing a tiny fragment of the pattern but never enough to make any sense. In one he was climbing out of a stream, all wet, while people on the bank were laughing at him. In another, he’d just been stung by a bee, in a field of nearly ripe oats. In another, he was sitting on the deck of a ship, looking straight up at the mast above his head. In another, he was throwing a stick for a dog. In another, he was stuck in a deep patch of muddy bog, which had just sucked the boot off his left foot. In another, he was up a ladder, picking cherries off a tree. In another, he was waking up out of a recurring bad dream, in which he’d seen a man tortured to death, and either he was the victim, or else he was the evil monster who’d given the order to the executioners—
He tried to catch hold of that memory, but it was too far back; the version of himself who’d had that dream was only a boy, maybe nine or ten years old. He could see himself waking up out of that dream – he was on the porch at Haldersness, curled up in a nest of blankets and pillows, and he was howling and sobbing with terror, as people came running to see what the matter was. Was it that dream again? they were asking, and he was nodding tearfully, the salt stinging his eyes (and a tear dribbled down onto his lips, and a calm part of his mind savoured the interesting taste).
When it finally deigned to show up, the dawn took him almost by surprise. It came out of the dull red glow of the volcano like a party of soldiers sneaking out from an ambush; it was only when the sun showed its rim over the red clouds that he recognised it for what it was.
It was a spectacularly beautiful dawn, an extraordinary fusion of shapes and colours, in which the familiar landscape suddenly appeared strange, different and new. He sat for a while and stared at it, trying to remember the last time he’d paid a sunrise the attention it deserved; and he found himself thinking, what if there was a day so perfect in every respect that a man could be entirely content, simply living that day over and over again? What if a man could pull up the ends of the straight line from birth to death and forge-weld th
em together, making his life a circle, a closed loop into which nothing bad could intrude and nothing good escape? Even if the day wasn’t perfect, what would it be like to circle endlessly over life, observing rather than participating, like the crow scouts? Nothing would matter, and so there could be no pain or sorrow, nothing behind or ahead to be afraid of; there would be no death overshadowing the future, no hidden guilt casting its shadow over the past, no causes or consequences, nothing ever irrevocable, nothing that couldn’t be put right next time around, nothing that needed putting right to begin with. Wouldn’t it be fine to divert the fire-stream and make it turn a wheel driving a shaft powering a mill or a lathe or a pump or a trip-hammer, something capable of doing useful work, tirelessly and for ever?
Then he remembered who he was and where he was going; and as the memory came back, he considered the thing he had to do that day. Before the sun rose again, he would have taken an utterly irrevocable step, channelling the fire-stream down onto the roof of his own house. In theory, here in the dawn’s apparent infinity of choice, he could simply get up and walk away, keep walking until he reached the sea; in practice he couldn’t turn back because he was already there, he couldn’t abandon the job in hand because it had already been done. Understanding that, he realised that he was already committed to the circle, not the straight line, but his endlessly recurring day was the opposite of perfect. This was the day where he would have to live for ever, and he was locked into it just as he was locked into every previous day of his life, and that every past day controlled every day yet to come. The hammer-weld that kept the world out kept him in, and there could be no escape. The circle was nothing more than the steel band of memory, circumscribing his life as a tyre surrounds a wheel, supporting and confining the spokes.