The Magician of Hoad

by Margaret Mahy

  An altering, oblong grayness flashed somewhere in front of Heriot. A door was opening, and a featureless shape moved through it. Almost immediately the grayness surrendered to the original blackness. The door had closed. Heriot, still half-hanging, half-standing in the dark, was blind again.

  Where are you? Heriot asked, speaking inwardly to his occupant.

  Here! Here! it replied, in no real voice but a voice all the same, a soft voice, blurred with sleep, yet carrying its own echoes.

  Help me! Heriot groaned, twisting himself, hoping to find a point of painless rest. Let’s get out of here.

  I must save myself, the occupant said. It mumbled incomprehensibly, then said clearly, There must be a true melting.

  Melting? Heriot exclaimed inwardly. What do you mean?

  But there was no reply.

  Very occasionally, footsteps could be heard somewhere beyond the darkness. Or was it his own heartbeat he was hearing? The door Betony had used was fitted so tightly there was no indication of its place, not the finest line to indicate its secretive shape. Heriot continually struggled to stand, but his struggles brought on agonizing cramps in his legs. If he tried to spare his legs, other pains attacked him, shooting down through his wrists and shoulders.

  “What’s the point of being a Magician,” Heriot muttered, “if I can’t save myself? What’s the point?” He tried to command his occupant again, but it refused to emerge from that secret hole in his head. Suddenly he was nothing more than an ordinary man, hanging by his wrists over a stone floor. He was powerless.

  At last the door was opened. Someone moved through the darkness toward him and held a jug of water to his lips. He tried to drink—his thirst raged—but the jug was snatched away and the water poured over him. Much later someone brought in food, setting it down deliberately close to him. He could smell cheese and freshly baked bread, but there was no way he could reach it. It had been put there not to feed him but to torment him. His fingers opened and shut uselessly in the air above him.

  At last the door opened for a third time, rather more slowly. Betony Hoad came in, carefully carrying a small flare, a light that shone upward, painting the underside of his chin a warm gold, and spilling downward to touch the embroidery on his clothes into strange life, so that he seemed to be advancing through a small jungle of vines and butterflies. He wore the crown of Hoad, and his hair hung from beneath it like yellow threads of silk. A giant shape, tall and broad, stalked in behind him carrying a chair, which it set down carefully. Betony Hoad sat down cautiously, then settled himself comfortably back into the chair, arranging his opulent robes around him. Then he crossed one leg casually over the other, his right ankle resting on his left knee.

  “Well, Magician,” he said. “How are you?”

  Heriot wondered for a moment if he would be able to remember how to speak. He swallowed, cleared his throat, swallowed again, and spoke at last.

  “You can see how things are, Lord Prince,” he said, and his voice sounded in his own ears to be as damaged as Cayley’s had been.

  “It warms my heart to see you so appropriately displayed,” Betony said. “Now, be a Magician! Perform some astonishing act. Save yourself, and maybe I will applaud, and save you too.”

  Heriot coughed. “All Hoad would rejoice to find that you have a heart, Lord Prince,” he mumbled.

  The dark giant… a jailer, perhaps… stepped out from behind Betony Hoad and struck Heriot a huge blow to his face. He felt his nose crack and twist, and thought he would lose consciousness. However, the blow had been well judged. He was not to be so lucky. Warm blood ran freely down into his mouth. As Heriot tasted himself in the dark, Betony Hoad clapped his hands languidly.

  “I still don’t know quite what my father had in mind leaving me here,” he said. “I know he doesn’t trust me. How could he, when I have declared myself to be untrustworthy over and over again? So did he hope I would lay myself open to criticism? Did he hope I would overstep the mark to such an extent he would be justified in chaining me to the wall, just as you are chained? It wasn’t an innocent decision on his part, was it? Innocence is beyond him. Perhaps you know. Tell me!”

  “But I don’t know,” Heriot began, croaking, then saw the guard stepping forward once more.

  “Wait!” said Betony, holding up his hand, and the guard hesitated. “Plead!” Betony said seductively. “Do plead for mercy!”

  Heriot closed his eyes. “There’s no point,” he muttered wearily, and as he shook his head, the guard struck him again, across the knees this time. Heriot heard himself cry out as his awareness spun away from him, then spun back again. He had no idea if he had been unconscious for a few seconds or for an hour. He only knew he was swinging from the chains around his wrists, pain in his ribs… agony in his knees. He had been struck and struck again. His human structure of bones, joints, and muscles no longer worked in the way he automatically expected it to work.

  “But I’ve done nothing,” he cried, and heard, in his own blurred, exhausted voice, not only appeal, but a great irritation.

  “It’s not what you’ve done, it’s who you are,” someone said. “What you are!” It wasn’t Betony Hoad speaking. The words came to him, loaded with memory.

  Heriot tilted his battered head against the wall behind him.

  “I’ll leave you for now,” he heard Betony Hoad say. “But I will be back again. And again. Why don’t you save yourself?” His familiar face advanced out of the darkness, only inches away from Heriot’s own. “We’ll move on to something more intricate than a simple beating next time. Your eyes, perhaps.” Saying this, smiling as he said it, he stabbed his forefinger into Heriot’s right eye before he could close it. The guard spoke.

  “He’s seen too much already,” he said. Through the screaming agony in his eye, Heriot forced himself to listen and knew at once the name of Betony Hoad’s companion.

  Touching his fingers in the blood still running around Heriot’s mouth, Betony Hoad studied his stained fingertips, and then, while Heriot still struggled with the pain of his violated eye, slowly licked them one by one. “Mmmm! Delicious!” he murmured. “What a vintage. You see, I want to be more than a mere king. I want you to make a Magician of me. I want to explore that particular ecstasy I can sometimes feel in you. I’m sure there must be a way to bleed the power into me. Think about it, if you want to keep on seeing the world.”

  But Heriot, his right eye screwed up, weeping and possibly bleeding, was now looking over Betony’s shoulder with his left eye, staring wildly at the guard.

  “Lord Carlyon,” he croaked, talking past the Prince. “Hero of Hoad. You have such talent for attacking the helpless.”

  Carlyon turned, pulling the hood away from his face. “Both of the central powers of Hoad… King and Hero… have come to wait on you,” he said. “We’ve merely patted you so far. But next time we’ll flatter you with intricacy— with steel. There are no rocks here to fall on me this time, other than the stones of the walls, but they are well sealed. Besides, you seem to have lost your skill as a Magician, and without it, you have no future.” Heriot said nothing, and his occupant did not stir. “I don’t think our dear, departed King will be imagining a partnership between Prince Betony and the Hero, do you? But you can hang there, monster, and do more than imagine it. You can think about it… and remember this.” Then he stepped forward, displacing Betony Hoad. What happened next Heriot was never able to remember. The blackness that suddenly enveloped him was hugely welcome.

  A DAMAGED VOICE

  Blackness still, but a different blackness from the one someone had fallen into in an earlier time. Someone… Ah! He was the someone who had fallen. Who was he? He was… he was Heriot Tarbas, the… the Magician… the Magician of Hoad. He had fallen… how long ago? Time had gone by, that was certain, but time was irrelevant. Still those cramps… still that agony in his eye… still the arrows of pain in his arms and shoulders…

  “Heriot,” said a voice, then added, speaking to itsel
f, “well, that’s rough work. Nothing delicate there.”

  The words were clear. The voice was a voice he knew, a voice he would remember forever… that voice damaged, yet with a curious, struggling music implicit in its damage.

  Heriot opened his eye… his contrary left eye… the right eye seemed to be too violated to be usable. There was light in the cell once more… a faint, flickering light… a flare, but he wasn’t looking directly into the light, simply staring down into a patchwork of shadows. The blackness, it seemed, had been entirely his own.

  “Come on!” said the voice, speaking with impatience rather than sympathy. “We’ve only got a little slot of time. I’ve let you down a bit. Up on your feet! Move! Move!”

  “I don’t think I can,” mumbled Heriot.

  “Try!” the voice said. “Enchant yourself!”

  And this time there was something in that voice that made Heriot jerk his head up and brace his feet against the floor… for it turned out he had feet after all.

  “Here!” said the voice. “I’ve brought shoes… boots… for you. I’ll slide them on.”

  Heriot felt someone handling his feet… felt his toes twisting yet again with cramp. But he was being shod by an unknown blacksmith. He looked downward, which he could do all too easily.

  There below him, defined by the fugitive light, was a head of scarlet braids wound into a crown. Someone was kneeling at those feet, twisting with cramps… someone was working at one of his chains. As he stared down, Heriot felt the chain fall away from him. The cap of red braids rose. Eyes looked briefly into his own left eye. A mouth smiled. Hands rested briefly on his shoulders, then, as the eyes lifted, the hands rose too, to tinker with the lock on the chain that held his right hand above his head. “You can’t have forgotten me already,” said that damaged voice. “Aren’t I grand these days?” she said. She leaned forward and kissed him passionately. “There now! Remember that? And not so many people get kissed by an Assassin.”

  Cayley had become a Wellwisher.

  Set free, Heriot’s right hand fell to his side… fell so heavily he felt the weight of it tug him down toward the floor. But Cayley was already working on the left-hand chain.

  “Have you got a key?” Heriot croaked. Cayley laughed very softly.

  “Not this time,” she said, turning away from him, “but I’ve still got that old skill. Remember? I can work locks like they was my well-behaved family doing what I tell them. I don’t even have to shout at them.”

  Now she had become nothing but a shadow once more, turning away from him and using the first flare to light a small lamp. “What you’ll have to do is to lean on me to begin with,” she said. “That Betony Hoad, he’s tried to reorder everything, wanting to damage his father, and that Hero has helped him, but he hasn’t stolen power from the Wellwishers yet. Not quite! Move your feet.”

  “They’ve forgotten how to move,” Heriot said, ashamed of his immobility.

  “Remind them,” said Cayley sharply.

  The urgency of her voice made him struggle with feet that were trying to roll limply outward. The boots felt completely foreign.

  “Step!” Cayley ordered impatiently. “I know it hurts, but take no notice. It’s just pain. You and me—we can be the masters of pain. We’ve got to use every minute we’ve got. Step!”

  Heriot stepped. It seemed that every stiffened muscle, every inch of abused skin, his beaten knees in particular, screamed simultaneously to be left alone.

  “Again! Again!” hissed Cayley. “There now, that’s better. I knew you could.”

  Leaning on her shoulder, Heriot shuffled across the cell, turned, and stumbled back again.

  “Do it by yourself,” Cayley said, sliding away from him. Heriot tried to follow her instructions while Cayley bent over a narrow bag on the floor, but, pitching forward, he dropped onto his abused knees. He heard himself groaning.

  “Try again. And let your hair loose,” Cayley ordered, speaking to him from under her arm. Heriot stood again and took a step with more confidence, enchanted with the triumph of a single step, even if pain was his partner. He put his hand up to his head, only to find himself touching a totally unexpected stubble.

  “They’ve cut it,” he cried, suddenly furious. “They’ve cut my hair.” For it suddenly seemed to him that, by cutting his hair, his enemies had completely severed him from Wish and Radley, from farm and family, and from what he most obstinately believed himself to be. A haircut was painless, yet it suddenly seemed to be the most ultimate violation of self.

  “That Prince, that Betony-the-Toad, is probably using it as a bookmark,” said Cayley. “They say he’s a reading man. So keep walking!”

  Curiously enough, anger at his shorn head filled Heriot with something approaching strength. He quickened his step. One knee surrendered again, but feeling its collapse coming, he shifted his weight and straightened himself, prepared now for the spears of pain that shot up and down his leg.

  “Now then,” said Cayley. “Bend a little.” And when Heriot did as he was told, Cayley tossed something over his stubbled head.

  “Arms!” said Cayley. “Arms now! Work your arms. Hold them up.” A moment later Heriot stood straight, with folds of a skirt tumbling around him.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “You’re dressed as one of the cleaning women,” Cayley said. “Not that it works really well, you’re so tall. But then they don’t always look closely at cleaning women. Lean forward again.” Heriot now felt something pulled forward over his head, then folded back from his eyes. “Lucky the cleaning women here wear hoods. The dress is really short on you, so bend over. Pity we can’t work out some exchange. I’m tall too, and I’m strong in the shoulders, but in my line of business I could do with being even broader. When the time comes I’ll have to make do, so let’s practice. Let’s make do now. There are two buckets outside the door… bit of water in one, brushes in the other. I thought they might have broken every joint in your body, but mainly what they done is break your nose, which is nothing, really.”

  “They promised to come back and work me over again,” Heriot said.

  “I’ll just bet they did,” Cayley replied. “But I’ve got in first. Now, pick up those buckets, stoop forward… stoop far forward… and let’s go. That shuffle is good.”

  “I’m not acting. It’s all I can manage,” said Heriot. He picked up the buckets, stooped forward, then shuffled ahead.

  “Look in front of you!” Cayley commanded, and once again Heriot did as he was told.

  They came out of the cell into a long, curving gallery. A low roof twisted up over him in a shallow arch, and, even stooping, he felt his head was going to knock against it. On ahead of them, a flickering torch, set in a wall bracket, filled the gallery with a vague light.

  “On! On!” hissed Cayley in that broken, urgent voice. “Walk toward the torch, and on around the bend. There’s a stair going up.” Heriot began to walk ahead of Cayley, the buckets swinging in his hands. “There might be a guard, though at this time of day, probably not. If there is a guard, today’s password is ‘Liberation.’ Whisper it as if you were afraid of the guard. Once you’re up the stair, you turn to the right and wind around another bend. There’ll be another stair upward with two guards. The password for them is ‘Eminence.’ Can you remember that, or have they shaken your brains to bits? Walk on quickly! Get ahead of me.”

  The hall was lined with doors fitting so snugly it was difficult to distinguish them from the walls in which they were set. Once Heriot thought he heard a sound coming from behind one of them and hesitated.

  “Walk on!” hissed the voice behind him.

  It was just as Cayley had thought it might be. There was no guard at the first stair, but two men stood at the second, looking like unreliable shadows in the light of yet another flickering torch behind them.

  “Well, here’s a true Lady of Diamond,” said one of them as Heriot climbed the stairs. “And what’s the word today, sweetheart?
”

  “Eminence!” croaked Heriot.

  “Clever as well as beautiful,” said the other guard. “What have you got in your buckets?”

  “Move her on!” That was Cayley now, coming up to the foot of the stair and speaking impatiently. “Get her out of my way.”

  Heriot suddenly found himself pushed forward and sideways.

  “Eminence,” he heard Cayley say in the soft voice of a Wellwisher. And within the next moment she was striding ahead of him. Heriot shuffled after her as quickly as he could.

  A door in the right-hand wall showed itself. Once again it was guarded, but there seemed to be no password needed. Cayley strode on through. The guards stood back for her, and Heriot followed, expecting a challenge, but none came. Step after step he struggled on, bracing himself against threatening collapse, following Cayley. Suddenly he knew where he was and where she was leading him. They were moving toward the door from Hoad’s Pleasure to the Third Ring of Diamond. A bridge between the prison and the city curved in front of them. The first light of a new day advanced to meet them. Only a few steps more—a few steps more—and…

  Once again the guards rapidly made way for Cayley.

  “I haven’t seen you before,” one of them said to Heriot, who bobbed so that the buckets clanked against the ground, trying to angle himself so that his face was shadowed under the hood.

  “Let her go!” said the other. “They’re always getting new cleaning women in Hoad’s Pleasure. After all, there’s always blood on the floor that needs mopping, even in times of peace, isn’t there? And probably a bit more these days, what with that Betony Hoad being such a sensitive King.”

  Heriot’s shuffling footsteps set curious hollow echoes running ahead of him as he limped across the bridge. Then he was safely over it and making, in his agonized fashion, for the narrowest and darkest of the streets that fanned away from Hoad’s Pleasure.