[Vlad Taltos 06] Athyra

by Steven Brust

  Vlad spared him a quick glance, which Savn could not read, then said, “It comes from spending time in the company of philosophers and Athyra.”

  “Oh.”

  “And having secrets.”

  “Oh.”

  A strange feeling came over Savn, as if he and Vlad had achieved some sort of understanding—it seemed that if he asked the Easterner a question, he might get an answer. However, he realized, he wasn’t certain what, of all the things he wondered about, he ought to ask. Finally he said, “Have you really spent a great deal of time around Athyra nobles?”

  “Not exactly, but I knew a Hawklord once who was very similar. And a drummer, for that matter.”

  “Oh. Did you kill them, too?”

  Vlad’s head snapped up; then he chuckled slightly. “No,” he said, then added, “On the other hand, it came pretty close with both of them.”

  “Why were they like Athyra?”

  “What do you know of the House?”

  “Well, His Lordship is one.”

  “Yes. That’s what brought it to mind. You see, it is a matter of the philosophical and the practical; the mystical and the mundane.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I know that,” said Vlad, still staring out at the River Flats.

  “Would you explain?”

  “I’m not certain I can,” said Vlad. He glanced at Savn, then back out over the cliff. “There are many who are contemptuous of the intellectual process. But those who aren’t afraid of it sometimes discover that the further you go from the ordinary, day-to-day world, the more understanding you can achieve of it; and the more you understand of the world, the more you can act, instead of being acted upon. That,” he added, almost as an afterthought, “is exactly what witchcraft is about.”

  “But you said before you ought to get involved, and now you’re saying you should stand apart.”

  “Got me,” said Vlad, smiling.

  Savn waited for him to continue. After a moment Vlad seated himself on the cliff.

  “Not stand apart in actions,” he said. “I mean, don’t be afraid to form general conclusions, to try to find the laws that operate in the actions of history, and to—”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Vlad sighed. “You should try not to get me started.”

  “But, about the Athyra ...”

  “Yes. There are two types of Athyra. Some are mystics, who attempt to explore the nature of the world by looking within themselves, and some are explorers, who look upon the world as a problem to be solved, and thus reduce other people to either distractions or pieces of a puzzle, and treat them accordingly.”

  Savn considered this, and said, “The explorers sound dangerous.”

  “They are. Not nearly as dangerous as the mystics, however.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because explorers at least believe that others are real, if unimportant. To a mystic, that which dwells inside is the only reality.”

  “I see.”

  “Baron Smallcliff is a mystic.”

  “Oh.”

  Vlad stood abruptly, and Savn had an instant’s fear that he was going to throw himself off the cliff. Instead he took a breath and said, “He’s the worst kind of mystic. He can only see people as ...” His voice trailed off. He looked at Savn, then looked away. For a moment, Savn thought he had detected such anger hidden in the Easterner that it would make one of Speaker’s rages seem like the pouting of a child.

  In an effort to distract Vlad, Savn said, “What are you?” It seemed to work, for Vlad chuckled slightly. “You mean am I a mystic or an explorer? I have been searching for the answer to that question for several years now. I haven’t found it, but I know that other people are real, and that is something.”

  "I guess?”

  “There was a time I didn’t know that.”

  Savn wasn’t certain how to respond to this, so he said nothing.

  After a moment, Vlad added, “And I listen to philosophers.”

  “When you don’t kill them,” said Savn.

  This time the Easterner laughed. “Even when I do, I still listen to them.”

  “I understand,” said Savn.

  Vlad looked at him suddenly. “Yes, I think that you do.”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “Sorry,” said Vlad. “You are, I don’t know, better educated than most of us from the city would have thought.”

  “Oh. Well, I learned my ciphers and history and everything because I filled the bucket when I was twenty, so they—”

  “Filled the bucket?”

  “Don’t they have that in the city?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never heard of it, at any rate.”

  “Oh. Well, I hardly remember doing it. I mean, I was pretty young at the time. But they give you a bucket—”

  “Who is ‘they’?”

  “Mae and Pae and Speaker and Bless.”

  “I see. Go on.”

  “They give you a bucket, and tell you to go out into the woods, and when you come back, they see what’s in the bucket and decide whether you should be trained for apprenticeship.”

  “And you had filled yours?”

  “Oh, that’s just a term that means they said yes. I mean, if you come back with water, then Bless will try you out as a priest, and if you come back with sticks, then, well, I don’t really know how they tell, but they decide, and when I came back they decided I should be apprenticed to Master Wag.”

  “Oh. What did you come back with?”

  “An injured daythief.”

  “Oh. That would account for it, I suppose. Still, I can’t help wondering how much of that is chance.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How often a child picks up the first thing he sees, and ends up being a cobbler when he’d be better off as a weaver.”

  “That doesn’t happen,” Savn explained.

  Vlad looked at him. “It doesn’t?”

  “No,” said Savn, feeling vaguely annoyed.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because ... it just doesn’t.”

  “Because that’s what you’ve always been told?”

  Savn felt himself flushing, although he wasn’t certain why. “No, because that’s what the test is for.”

  Vlad continued studying him. “Do you always just accept everything you’ve been told, without questioning it?”

  “That’s a rude question,” said Savn without thinking about it.

  Vlad seemed startled. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Some things,” said Savn, “you just know.”

  Vlad frowned, and took a step away from the cliff. He clasped his hands behind his back and cocked his head slightly. “Do you?” he asked. “When you ‘just know’ something, Savn, that means it’s so locked into your head that you operate as if it were true, even when you find out it isn’t.” He knelt down so that he was facing Savn directly. “That isn’t necessarily a good idea.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You’re so convinced that your Baron Smallcliff is invincible and perfect that you’d stand there and let him kill you rather than raising a finger to defend yourself.”

  “That’s different.”

  “Is it?”

  “You’re changing the subject. There are things that you know way deep down. You know they’re true, just because they have to be.”

  “Do they?”

  “Well, yes. I mean, how do you know that we’re really here? You just know.”

  “I know some philosophers who would disagree with you,” said Vlad.

  “The ones you killed?”

  Vlad laughed. “Well taken,” he said. He stood and walked over to the cliff again, and stared out once more. Savn wondered what he was trying to find. “But sometimes,” continued the Easterner, “when it’s time to do something, it matters whether you know why you’re doing it.”

  “What do you mean?”

&n
bsp; Vlad frowned, which seemed to be his usual expression when he was trying to think of how to say something. “Sometimes you might get so mad that you hit someone, or so frightened you run, but you don’t really know why. Sometimes you know why you should do something, but it’s all in your head. You don’t really feel it, so you have trouble making yourself do it.”

  Savn nodded. “I know what you mean. It’s like when I’ve been out late and Maener asks what I’ve been doing and I know I should tell her, but I don’t.”

  “Right. It isn’t always easy to act on what’s in your head instead of what’s in your heart. And it isn’t always right to. The whole trick to knowing what to do is deciding when to make yourself listen to your head, and when it’s okay to just follow your feelings.”

  “So, how do you do it?”

  Vlad shook his head. “I’ve been trying to figure that one out myself for the last few years, and I haven’t managed. But I can tell you that it works best when you understand why you feel a certain way, and to do that, sometimes you have to take things you know and question them. That’s one of the good things Athyra and philosophers do.”

  “I see what you’re getting at,” said Savn slowly.

  Vlad looked at him once more. “Yes? And?”

  “Some things you just know.”

  Vlad seemed about to say something, but evidently decided to let the matter drop. They fell silent, and Vlad went back to scanning the area below them.

  After a while the Easterner said, “Who’s that lady wearing the green hat, talking to everyone in sight?”

  “I don’t know her name, but she’s their priestess.”

  “Of?”

  “What do you mean, ‘of? Oh, I see. Of Trout.”

  “Hmmm. No help there.”

  “No help for what?”

  “Never mind. Do you, also, worship Trout?”

  “Worship?”

  “I mean, who do you pray to?”

  “Pray?”

  “Who is your god?”

  “Bless seems to be on good terms with Naro, the Lady Who Sleeps, so that’s who he usually asks things of.”

  Vlad nodded, then pointed once more. “Who is that fellow walking down toward the water?”

  “I don’t remember his name. He makes soap and sells it.”

  “Where does he sell it?’

  “Just there, along the river. Most of them make their own, I think, the same as we do, so he doesn’t get much business except from those who are washing clothes and didn’t bring enough.”

  “There’s nowhere else he sells it?”

  “No, not that I’m aware of. Why?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “We don’t wash at the river; we have wells.”

  “You wash in your wells?”

  “No, no, we—”

  “I was kidding.”

  “Oh. We go to the river to swim sometimes, but only upstream of them. You can’t swim in the Upper Brownclay; it’s too cold and fast.”

  “Who’s that, just going beneath the scatterbush?”

  “There? That’s Fird. He came in to see Master Wag once with some sort of awful rash on his hand, and Master Wag rubbed it with rose leaves and it went away.”

  “What is he doing?”

  “Selling fruit.”

  “Fruit? You have fruit around here?”

  “Fird brings it in from upriver. We don’t have very much. It’s expensive. We get mangoes, though, and ti’iks, and oranges, and—”

  “Doesn’t Tem sell them?”

  “He can’t afford it. Fird is the only one.”

  “I’ll have to meet him.”

  “He’s by the river just about every day. We could go down if you want to.”

  “Not just yet. Where else does he sell this fruit?”

  “Just here. And at the castle, I think.”

  “Really? He serves Smallcliff?”

  “No, just those who serve His Lordship.”

  “That’s interesting.”

  “Is it? At first that’s all he did—bring in fruits and vegetables to feed His Lordship’s staff, but then he found that if he went down to the river everyone wanted to buy something, so now, I think, he has more customers on the beach than in the servants, although I don’t know if that matters—”

  “His name, you say, is Fird?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very well.”

  Vlad watched a little longer, then grunted and turned away from the cliff.

  “Are we going to the caves again?” said Savn.

  “No, I was thinking of going back to Tem’s, for a glass of wine.”

  “Oh.”

  As they walked back along the slip, it seemed to Savn that the feeling had passed—that something which had been open within the strange man who walked next to him had shut again. Well, he thought. Now that it’s too late, I wonder what I should have asked him.

  As they reached the top of the hill and found the road once more, he said, “Uh, Vlad?”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you, um, do something to Mae and Pae last night?”

  Vlad frowned. “Do something? You mean, cast a spell of some sort? What makes you think so? Are they acting strange?”

  “No, it’s just that I don’t understand why they weren’t angry with me for staying out so late.”

  “Oh. I took responsibility for it, that’s all.”

  “I see,” said Savn. He wasn’t convinced, but then, he had trouble believing that the Easterner had really put a spell on them to begin with. Because he didn’t want to leave that question hanging between them, he said, “What are your parents like?”

  “They’re dead,” said Vlad.

  “Oh. I’m sorry.” He thought for a moment of what it would be like to be without Mae and Pae, then decided not to dwell on the thought. He said, “Are they the ones who taught you?”

  “No, my grandfather did that.”

  “Is he—?”

  “No, he’s still with us. Or, at any rate, he was a few years ago. He’s an old man, but witches, like sorcerers, tend to live a long time.”

  They came to the widening of the road that wagons used when they had to turn around, which was located just west of where the road began its twisting way into town. The forest still rose high on either side of them.

  Savn said, “Were you going to show me some more witchcraft today?”

  Vlad seemed to shrug without actually moving his shoulders. “What would you like to learn?”

  “Well, I mean, I don’t know. I’d like to learn to do something interesting.”

  “That’s one approach.”

  They walked back along the road, passing the place where Savn had first seen Vlad, and started up the gentle slope that lead to the last hill before town.

  “What do you mean?” said Savn.

  “The Art can be approached from several directions. One is learning to do interesting things, another is the search for knowledge, yet another, the search for understanding, or wisdom, if you prefer, although it isn’t really the same—”

  “That’s what you were talking about before, isn’t it? I mean, about witchcraft, and understanding.”

  “Yes.”

  “But isn’t knowledge the same as understanding?”

  “No.”

  Savn waited for the Easterner to explain, but he didn’t. Instead he added, “And yet another way is the search for power.”

  “Which way did you go?”

  “Like you. I wanted to learn to do interesting things. I sort of had to.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Oh. Well, what about me?”

  “You should think about which direction you want to take.”

  “I know already.”

  “Oh? Tell me.”

  “Like I said, I want to do interesting things.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Like you.”

  “Why is that?”

  “To impres
s girls.”

  Vlad looked at him, and Savn had the feeling that the Easterner was, somehow, seeing him for the first time. After a moment, a smile came to Vlad’s mouth and he said softly, “Well, why not? Let’s step off the road a ways. Forests and jungles always feel right for this sort of thing.”

  “What about a place of power?”

  Vlad chuckled. “Unnecessary—for this stage.”

  “All right. I suppose I’ll understand eventually.”

  “Yes, chances are you will, but we won’t worry about that for now.”

  “Here?”

  “A little further, I think. I don’t want to be distracted by the sounds of horses and wagons.”

  Savn followed him around thick trees, over low shrubs, and under hanging boughs until he seemed to find what he was looking for, whereupon he grunted, settled down against the wide base of a sugar maple, and said, “Get comfortable.”

  “I’m comfortable,” said Savn, seating himself. Then, realizing that he wasn’t, really, adjusted himself as best he could. He began to feel excitement, but he shook his shoulders back and waited, trying to remember the relaxed state he’d been in before. Vlad looked at him carefully, smiling just a little beneath the hair that grew about his lip.

  “What is it?” asked Savn.

  “Nothing, nothing. What do you know of psychic communication?”

  “Well, I know people who can do it, a little. And I know that sorcerers can do it.”

  “Have you ever tried?”

  “Me? Well, no.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, I, uh, I have no reason to think I can.”

  “Everyone can. You just have to be shown how.”

  “You mean, read minds?”

  “Not exactly. It’s more like speaking without making a sound. It is possible to read minds, but that is far, far more difficult, and even then you might be caught at it.” Vlad paused, and seemed to be remembering something, to judge by the distant look in his eyes and the half-smile on his face. “Many people become annoyed if you attempt to penetrate their thoughts.”

  “I would think so,” said Savn.

  Vlad nodded, then reached for a chain that hung around his neck, hesitated, licked his lips, and removed it. On the end was a simple setting which held what appeared to be a piece of black rock.

  “What is—?”

  “Don’t ask,” said Vlad. At the same time, there was a sudden flapping sound overhead, as if two or three very large birds had been disturbed. Savn jumped, startled, but Vlad shook his head, as if to say that it was nothing to worry about.