“What?”
“The dead don't eat.”
Nul looked puzzled. “What dead have to do with it? Where you think you are?”
“Heaven? Or—”
The pika gave his urfing laugh. “Nah, nah, you not dead. You resting in own bed. In Tremien's palace on Whitehorn. Open eyes again and look.”
Jeremy did. He was in the old tower room again, on a deep, soft bed, a sheet drawn almost up to his chin. His arms lay on top of the covers, and they had been wrapped with many bandages. He tried to move his right arm, and, to his surprise, it moved. “How long?” he asked.
“You really awake now? Not talk-talk in sleep, in strange language anymore?”
“I'm awake. How long has it been?”
“Since Hag's house fall into water? Three weeks, a little more, few days more.”
Jeremy brushed back his hair. It felt oily and dirty beneath his palm, and he realized the room was warm enough to make him sweat a little. “I don't remember anything. I thought you—” Jeremy turned his head to look at Nul. The little pika sat in a chair stuffed with cushions, and on a low stool before him his legs, both splinted and wrapped tightly in bandages, were carefully propped. The left arm too was splinted and in a sling. Nul's face had shrunk in on the bones a little, and the orange eyes will still a little paler than they should have been, but his grin was as roguish as ever, and the gap in it was now completely closed. Jeremy smiled back at him. “How are you?”
“Healing. Melodia pull me back from doors of death. Strange, you know? At first I not want to come.”
“I know,” Jeremy said.
“She say I always walk with little limp. But otherwise, good as ever, same old Nul. Pika-man hard, like bones of mountains. Good thing for me. How you feel?”
“Sore. What happened to me?”
“Lots of little glass-glass. Your mail shirt protect you mostly, but many in arms, some in face. Miss eyes, though, and that good. And you hit wall hard. Kelada bring you out of castle, you know?”
Jeremy frowned. “I think I remember that.”
“Yes, whole castle begin to fall into mere, one stone, two, then all stones. We all safe on hill outside curtain wall, and Kelada go back in. She pull you out window somehow, into garden of castle. Then all stones begin sinking into swamp, she left finally on island. She pick you up. Yes! The little woman pick up you, walk across swamp on top of sinking stones. Then try to bandage while Melodia called Tremien. Tremien put travel spell on all, we come here, healers work with you. Close, they said. Not loss of blood so much as—what word for great strain, tiredness?”
“Shock?”
“Ya, ya, shock. But you getting better now.”
“The others?”
“All well. Melodia, Gareth, Barach, Kelada, all well. They see you pretty soon.”
“Is this the hospital wing?” Jeremy asked.
“Hospital? Nah, nah. But I get tired alone in ‘nother room, nothing to do but sit. Think if I come and wait till you wake up, you maybe tell more stories.”
“I will,” Jeremy smiled. “I promise.”
Nul grinned at him, then grew more sober. “I sit and think much these last days. Everyone treat me good, very kind, but in sickness I still feel all alone. Now I want ask your opinion. I think, Nul, it time to seek family. Must be some trace of pika-people left. Now Hag gone, Wolmas Mountains safe again, and caverns under them. I think maybe I go try to find if any pikas left alive, you know? You think that a good thought?”
“I think it's a wonderful thought,” Jeremy said.
“Not great quest, but important to me.” Nul looked away. “Would like to have magician along, maybe, for company. Maybe could help out little bit.”
“Nul, I would be honored.”
“Not expect much. Dirty old caverns.”
“Nul.”
“What?”
“I think I am hungry.”
Two mornings later, Gareth and four soldiers came to carry Nul and help Jeremy downstairs. Jeremy was alarmingly weak—he had to stop and rest every few feet, and Gareth practically bore his whole weight down the stairs—but he walked into Tremien's study under his own power. Still, he was grateful that Tremien had set a large chair directly across the desk from his own, and he sat down with a sigh. He looked from face to face: Melodia, unusually solemn; Gareth, honesty and concern shining in his countenance; Barach, strangely quiet; Nul, his white legs thrust stiffly out ahead of him; and old Tremien, seeming more withered and ancient than ever, but his eyes still bright. “Where's Kelada?” Jeremy asked.
“She did not know if you wanted her to be here,” Tremien said. “I will send for her.”
One of the soldiers at the door turned and went on the errand. Barach winked at Jeremy. “You can see,” Jeremy said in surprise.
“Oh, yes, my eyesight returned.” What was there in the voice? It was something new, a serenity that Jeremy had never heard there before. “It was a spell of the Hag's, you see, or tied up in the one that she hurled. When she perished, my vision came back.”
“Your magic?”
The warm brown eyes smiled. “No. I am no longer a magician, or will ever be again.”
“But he is still a teacher,” Tremien said. “If the old fool would admit it.”
“Who would wish to be taught by a mage who can no longer do the least magic?”
“I would, Master,” Jeremy said. Both Barach and Tremien looked hard at him. “The mirrors are broken,” Jeremy went on. “I have no path now to lead me home. I have to stay here in Thaumia. I don't know what will happen—my original mana came from Earth, and was tied somehow to the mirrors—but I've been exploring my feelings for the last two days. I still have magic in me, and if I'm not mistaken, it's growing.”
“You had better look,” Barach told Tremien.
The old mage fumbled for his spectacles, hooked them around his ears, and studied Jeremy through their lenses. “Bless my soul. It seems you are right, Jeremy. Your emanations are growing stronger—and stranger. There is still much there of Earth, and much of Thaumia, but something yet different from either, and very beautiful. I don't know what you'll make of these powers, but powers you possess, beyond any doubt.”
“Then I will need a teacher.”
Barach looked at him for a long moment. He is so fragile, Jeremy thought, yet so tough too; if he stood before a candle in a dark room, the light would shine through him. “Jeremy, if you stay with us, I will certainly teach you what I can,” he said at last.
Jeremy frowned. “If?”
“Hush,” Tremien said. “Enough of that for the moment. Kelada, Jeremy has asked for you.”
Jeremy turned in his seat. For an instant he was breathless: Kelada stood just inside the door, her hair longer than he remembered it and more golden, her eyes downcast. She wore a dress of palest blue that left her arms bare, and on her feet were blue slippers. When she looked at him, her eyes held more beauty than anything he had ever seen. It wrenched his heart to look at her. She came forward slowly and shyly.
“Well,” Tremien said, “here we all are at last! Each of you has asked me at one time or another various things, and it is better to answer with you all together, so I will not have to repeat myself. First, I hope, in your hearts is concern for me. I am fine. Like Jeremy and Nul, I was wounded—more through loss of magic than anything, though, and in spirit only, not in body—but I am fast mending. In fact, I believe that with the turning of a year I shall be stronger than I have been for a long time, for the Hag is no longer here to darken my spirit and trouble my mind. For that, Jeremy, all of us in Cronbrach must thank you.
“Second: the Great Dark One lives still, but the council have felt his power diminish greatly. In fact, if I could be permitted a small jest, I privately think we should change his title to the Lesser Dark One immediately. He lost more than we had dreamed possible when the mirrors were shattered, and it will be many years before he could regain enough strength to be a threat to anyone outsid
e of Relas. But the council are debating measures to be taken now, and it may be that while he is trying to recover from the blow Jeremy gave him we will wish to move to erase his evil for once and all. Again, Jeremy deserves all our thanks.
“Third: the Hag is dead, and her spells are utterly broken. Already my messengers tell me the Haggenkom is cleansing itself: the river running sweeter, the meres beginning to clear, even a little greenery peeping through the soil here and there. It will be weary long years before the valley is whole, but a time is coming when humans will once again live there and call it home. We will have a problem to deal with, however: the vilorgs.”
“No problem,” Nul growled. “Kill them.”
Tremien shook his head. “No. The Hag used them for evil, but the vilorgs are not evil in themselves. They fled the collapse of the castle, but now they are drifting back to its site. Creatures of habit, they try to resume such duties as they knew, but they are not bright enough to live on their own. And they are harmless now, pathetically grateful for food and shelter, I hear. They cannot revert to being mere animals, for the Hag made them more than that, yet they will never be human, or as intelligent as the pikas, say. But they did not make themselves, and I will not have them killed for something that is no fault of their own.”
“Mage Tremien,” Melodia said, her voice tentative.
“Yes, Melodia?”
“Gareth and I have spoken together of the valley. We would go there, if you will allow us, to bring healing and protection. Such aid as my magic will give the vilorgs shall be given to them, and such comfort as my healing powers can bring to the valley shall be bestowed there, with your permission and the council's.”
Tremien regarded her intently. “I have talked of this with Gareth. Is it truly the decision of your heart?”
Melodia would not look at Jeremy. “Yes, Mage.”
“So be it, then. Gareth, I name you and Melodia Protectors of the Valley—and let its name be no more the Haggenkom, the Witch's Vale, but rather its name of old, the Arendolas, the Place of Many Lakes.” Jeremy saw Gareth take Melodia's hand, and his heart twinged with jealousy. “Now,” Tremien resumed, “what have I left unanswered?”
“What happened to Smokharin?” Jeremy asked. “I left him in the throne room, in the flame of a torch.”
“When the castle fell,” Gareth said, “a fire broke out in the wrack amid a pile of tapestries, splintered timbers, and even of vilorg bodies. Smokharin manifested in that, and Melodia was able to recall him to his tinderbox. He is safe.”
“We fared better than I could have expected,” Tremien said. “Yet we have many dead to mourn. Five of your party, Jeremy, and nearly a hundred who fell in the defense of Whitehorn. It is meet that we celebrate, yet we must not forget them, either. Now. It is time for you to heal, to gain your strength back, and to look ahead: for the council are discussing your great gift to us and your great accomplishment, and we may have something to surprise you with before the summer reaches its height. In the meantime, Jeremy Sebastian Moon, I name you mage. You are truly one of our brotherhood now, and one day before long we will ask you to sit with us at council. But for now, rest, grow strong, and heal the hurts of your heart as well as those of your flesh.”
Jeremy bowed his head. “Thank you, Mage Tremien.”
“No, Mage Jeremy. Thank you. Thank you for saving our lives and our world.”
Almost another week passed before Jeremy was able to speak to Melodia. The snows of Whitehorn Peak persisted even into the summer, though they diminished and were too much melted to walk on, but within the courtyards the ground was free of snow, and in one pleasant spot the cooks grew herbs, vegetables, and a few kinds of flowers. Jeremy, walking for the sake of exercise, had grown tired in the garden and had settled on the low wall of a stone pool full of darting red and blue fish. Melodia came to him slowly, wearing a gown with tiny bells on it. “Gareth and I leave tomorrow,” she said. “I wanted to say good-bye.”
Jeremy moved over, and Melodia sat beside him. “Are you certain that you want to go?” he asked.
“No. How can I be? But Gareth loves me, he says, and I care for him a great deal. Do you remember a time in the Hag's castle when you touched us all with your mind? Gareth felt you, knew you were there, but I was in you for just a moment, and I knew all your heart, all your secrets. You love me, I know, but I also know now that your love is different from mine. Believe me, this is better for us both.”
“You can have anything in my gift that you would name,” Jeremy said.
“I know that. But there is something else. Something hard for me to say.”
“What is it?”
“I give life, I do not take it, ever. And you have killed.”
“But so has Gareth!”
“I know. But I was not part of him, as, for just a moment, I was of you; I did not feel his joy in killing, or his wrath, or his sorrow. And I did not gain his memories of the ones he had slain. I am very sorry, Jeremy, for in some sense I love you still, but never again could I look at you in the same way, or feel the same feelings as once I did.”
“Will you kiss me?”
“In farewell.”
Her lips were soft, her breath warm on his face. Then she rose and walked away without a look back. Jeremy lingered in the garden until the sun had dropped below the western walls, and then he too got up and slowly walked back to his room.
Nul remained in Jeremy's room, sleeping propped in the chair, chatting with him during the long days of healing. And he had stories from Jeremy, yes, as many as Jeremy could recall. Nul's eyes shone at the witches in Macbeth, and he rolled their chant over and over his tongue for many days after hearing the tale: “Double, double, toil and trouble...”
He sympathized with Othello, but stubbornly maintained that the whole tragedy was a result of human stupidity. “Pika-mans not have just one wife. Pika-Othello, he say, ‘You want Desdemona? You take, I have plenty more.’ Why human-mans so selfish about wives?”
But most of all, Nul enjoyed Jeremy's fractured recollections of Paradise Lost. He seemed to regard Satan as one of the incarnations of the Great Dark One, and in the archangels he clearly saw the magi of Cronbrach. He sighed at the ending, but cherished the hope of good coming from evil. “Always the way,” he assured Jeremy. “Bad happen, think all over. But look close, close, see some little seed of good left. Evil never finish ahead, never; it seem that way, but little good still growing, put little root under rock of evil, one day split rock apart. Always the way.”
“Nul,” Jeremy said seriously, “I wish I had your conviction.”
A day came heavy with thunder and thick with rain that lashed the valley below, sent gray fingers to break and dwindle the snows of the peaks. Jeremy, sitting in a chair and staring out a window, heard someone come in. It was Barach. “Are you better?” the old man asked.
“I don't know. I have times when I feel as if I am, and then times when I wish I had died in the Hag's castle.”
“It's all in the way you look at things, you know,” Barach said.
Jeremy smiled. “Have you a story about that, teacher?”
Barach pulled up another chair and sat with him. “Let me see. Not a story exactly, but I do know a riddle that touches the matter. It is called the riddle of the inns. Shall I tell it?”
“I would like to hear you talk again,” Jeremy said.
Barach laced his fingers across his stomach and began: “Once there was a small inn nestled between two tall trees not far from a bridge that spanned a broad river. One summer evening, two travelers stopped there, one going south, one north.
“The traveler heading north was returning from a city where he had sold some goods in the marketplace. They had brought him less than he thought they should, and he looked forward to a bad-tempered greeting from his shrew of a wife when he returned. But the traveler going south was a young man who had long been in love with a young woman of the city, and only yesterday he had received a letter from her fathe
r consenting to their marriage.
“The two travelers arrived at the same moment, put their horses in adjoining stalls, and went together into the inn. They sat at the same board, ate the same food, and at the coming of night went into rooms alike as two scales on a fish.
“They awoke at the same hour next morning, ate breakfast at the same table, and prepared to go their different ways. The northbound traveler paid his score with ill grace. ‘The stable boy nearly killed my horse, not rubbing him down before he put him in a stall. The slop on your tables would not be fit provender for my pigs. Your rooms are dear and filthy, and I have never slept in a harder or more verminous bed. Never shall I lay my head under your roof again!’ He counted the coppers out grudgingly to settle his bill and he left, throwing a curse back over his shoulder.
“But the southbound traveler paid what he owed with a smile and a good word for everyone. ‘You have cared for my horse as if she were a prince's steed!’ he cried to the ostler, and then gave the man a silver coin above what he owed him for taking care of the mare. The traveler then burst into the kitchen, smacked two resounding kisses on the fat cheeks of the cook, and declared, ‘You are a treasure! You make bacon and potatoes a feast for the gods!’ And to her he gave another silver piece. And last, he called the innkeeper the best of hosts, extolled the cleanliness and comfort of his rooms, and gave the man two silver pieces to make sure that the man would hold vacant a suite of rooms for the traveler's honeymoon in two weeks’ time. Then, riding away from the inn, the southbound traveler prayed blessings on the inn and its owner.
“Now, apprentice, here is the riddle: there were two travelers. Were there not also two inns?”
Jeremy looked from the rain to the bearded old man. “Welcome back, teacher,” he said softly.
On still another day, one of those bright days of summer when the sun climbs high and the clouds are small, white, and puffy, Kelada and Jeremy took a meal down into the valley and found a pleasant place beside the river for a picnic. The water rushed white over stones, and now and again a fish leaped. The only other sound was a drowsy, distant chopping as foresters trimmed away last year's dead trees and prepared firewood for the coming winter. After they had eaten, Kelada and Jeremy waded in the cold water, felt it clutching and tugging at their bare legs; and then they sat beneath a tree, close together.
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