Od Magic

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “Why should they? They are expelled if they are caught in that quarter.”

  “I wasn’t expelled.”

  “You weren’t caught.”

  His thoughts strayed from his own past to the gardener, with all that unruly power kept in check only by ignorance.

  “What is it?” he heard Ceta ask.

  “Nothing. A student crossed my mind.”

  “Oh.” She rose, calling again, lightly, “Shera!” as she took candle in one hand, and his hand in her other, tugging him into her flowing wake of scent and silk.

  Walking back to the school later, down the street that followed the broad river until an ancient wall sent the street curving away from the enclosed Twilight Quarter and uphill toward the Royal Quarter, Yar chanced upon a second marvel.

  There was a confusing roil of activity around the Twilight Gate, an archway through the thick wall which led to the upside-down world within. The peculiar quarter slept by day and lived by night; there was always a flow of traffic in and out of the gate from moonrise to dawn. But this train of bulky wagons strung with odd lights, drawn by oxen with ribbons on their horns, seemed unusual, surrounded as it was by jugglers tossing what looked like falling stars and crescent moons, by drummers and pipers creating a fanfare for the wagons, elaborately costumed riders on horseback patiently following the slow carts. Performers, Yar thought as he passed them, and wondered how far they had come.

  A swirl of color caught his eye. A woman rode past him, and he stopped. She seemed surrounded by coils of light, his confused eyes told him. Then he amended that to streams of finest silk, flowing from her wrists and hair and ankles, held by various figures in voluminous skirts who spun, now and then, forming circles as round as the moon with their skirts, as the streamers of silk in their hands fashioned their own dance around the rider.

  She turned a little in her saddle to look back at Yar. Her exquisite face seemed real and unreal at once: a porcelain mask, or skin so pale she might have been kin to the moon. Her eyes caught torchlight, blazed a warm, lucent amber, then faded dark as eyeholes in a mask. Her hair, a long, rippling flow behind her, seemed to have caught the jugglers’ stars in it like a great, dark net.

  What are you? he thought amazedly.

  She turned her face away from him at the question. He stood there watching the swirls of light and shadow weaving around her until she passed into the shadow of the gate and he could move again.

  THREE

  Arneth Pyt sat surrounded by cold, white, windowless marble walls in his quarter warden’s chamber; he was staring at a list of street wardens on duty that night and wishing he were one of them. On a side wall, an ancestor of the king’s, fully dressed in armor and looking as though something had bitten him under his cuisse, glowered moodily down at Arneth. Through the partially open door, he could see his efficient secretary attending to paperwork before he passed it along for Arneth’s signature. The chamber was one of many in the High Warden’s domain, a huge, drafty, charmless building adjoined by various routes, some secret, to the kings palace. It was dead quiet, except for the rustle of paper in the next room. Arneth heard himself yawn, stifled the sound. He cracked a knuckle, stopped that as well. Slowly, with infinite care, he dipped pen in an ornate inkstand and affixed his name to the list of night wardens for the Twilight Quarter. He set it to one side on the vast, gleaming slab of polished wood he had been given for his official duties. He wondered what to do next.

  He was a tall, muscular man with his mother’s yellow hair and his father’s green eyes, without their chilly sheen. His father, Murat Pyt, had worked his way with great energy and ambition from street warden to quarter warden of the Ports, and then of the Royal Quarter. He achieved his lifelong goal of High Warden about the time Arneth took to the streets himself. The rank of High Warden carried a title with it, which caused Murat Pyt much satisfaction with himself and sudden dissatisfaction with his son, who seemed content to be a street warden for the rest of his life. For several years he had badgered Arneth to take a more prestigious post that would reflect his father’s glory. But Arneth liked his work. He was skilled in arms, intelligent, and he liked to challenge his muscles and his wits in the streets of Kelior. Frustrated, Lord Pyt put him in the Twilight Quarter, hoping that the strange hours and eccentric demands of that enclosed world would cause him to quit the streets and take up an occupation more appropriate to the High Warden’s status. But Arneth found the quarter fascinating. Finally, Lord Pyt stumbled upon the only solution to his exasperating son. He promoted Arneth, rewarding his years of service with marble walls, a secretary to do his work, and the respectable title of quarter warden of the Twilight Quarter.

  Arneth had never been so bored in his life.

  He was pondering the question of what he would do with his life if he simply walked out of his position and kept walking, when his secretary passed along an urgent summons from the High Warden. Arneth wondered if his father had heard his thoughts. He went down several halls, up endless stairways to Lord Pyt’s chambers, where he found his father pacing, under the opaque, honey-colored eyes of the king’s newest counselor, Valoren Greye.

  Arneth had met the young wizard once before and found him disconcerting. His father, Lord Tenenbros, had a craggy castle somewhere in the north country; the boggy hinterlands might explain his heir’s damp temperament. He had spent much of his life refining his powers according to the exacting standards of the School of Magic; his reputation had preceded him to court and easily caught the interest of the king.

  “My son, Arneth Pyt,” Murat intoned, in case the wizard had forgotten. “Quarter warden of the quarter in question.”

  Valoren nodded, with no more expression than an owl. He was thin, slightly stooped; his light hair hung limply around his face. “I remember you,” he said, giving Arneth an unsettling impression that he remembered everything he saw, and saw what everyone else missed.

  “What’s the question?” Arneth asked, settling onto a corner of Murat’s desk. The High Warden glared; he removed himself hastily.

  “The question,” Valoren said in his quiet, even voice, “is the magician Tyramin, who entered the Twilight Quarter two nights ago.”

  “Tyramin.” The name sounded familiar, but he could not remember why.

  “He was rumored to be in south Numis last spring,” Murat reminded him.

  “And before that, in the west,” Valoren added.

  Arneth nodded, enlightened. “Rumors of Tyramin,” he said. “I heard them several times on the streets of the Twilight Quarter. So, is he actually here? Or is it another rumor?”

  “He was seen,” the wizard said impassively, “entering Kelior. I have informed the king.”

  “What for? He’s a trickster. A performer. He pulls paper flowers out of his sleeves. Doesn’t he?”

  The wizard fixed Arneth with an unblinking gaze. “Does he?”

  “So I heard. When he was simply a rumor.”

  “What else have you heard?”

  Arneth thought. “Not much. That he was born in a distant land. Also that he was born here.”

  “In Kelior?”

  “In the Twilight Quarter.”

  Murat Pyt tapped his desk with the stone of his ring of office, as murkily green as his eyes. He was a hale, powerful man, utterly devoid of humor, whose hooked profile reminded Arneth of the paper crescent moons with painted faces on sticks sold in the Twilight Quarter. “Is that so?” he asked Arneth. “How could such magic be born in Kelior?”

  “It’s not real magic,” Arneth suggested. “So I’ve heard. Just tricks, illusions. So they say.”

  “They,” Valoren echoed softly, his eyes distant now, his thoughts indrawn. “I have been hearing about Tyramin for years. He is here, he is there, maybe working magic, maybe not. Maybe in Numis, maybe not. He attracts great, unruly crowds. Some say he teaches magic unlawfully and incites mischief. Others say he is simply a trickster, earning his living by creating illusions. He has come with his ambiguitie
s into Kelior. The king is concerned. The High Warden says you know the streets of the Twilight Quarter as well as anyone and that he trusts your judgment. I want to know what it might take to arrest Tyramin if need arises: a single street warden or the entire School of Magic. Can you find out?”

  “I don’t know anything about magic,” Arneth said simply. “I only know that in the Twilight Quarter everything can seem possible. Maybe a wizard would be a better judge of Tyramin.”

  “Perhaps. But Tyramin might possess the power to conceal from a wizard what he would not bother to hide from you. His first performance will be tonight. So rumor has it, at least. Go to it. Use your discretion. See what you can see. I want to know if Tyramin is any threat to the king, to Kelior, or to Kelior’s wizards.”

  Arneth nodded, then looked at the High Warden, who seemed torn between annoyance at having to let Arneth loose again on the streets and pride that he alone had been chosen to do this secret task for the king. “I see I must release you from your duties as quarter warden,” Lord Pyt said ponderously, and added with emphasis, “Temporarily.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Don’t call me that here,” his father said irritably.

  “Sorry. Yes, sir.”

  He returned to his office, told his secretary to do without him for a while. He signed a few papers the secretary thrust hastily under his nose. After some thought, Arneth went home, changed his clothes, then rode alone into the oldest section of Kelior to pursue the rumor of magic.

  The Twilight Quarter was so named because during the brightest hours of the day it barely stirred; it only came to life as the sun sank. Then doors were unlocked, windows opened; odd shops without names lit their lamps; people spilled into the streets. Smells of meat and onions sizzling on flames, freshly baked bread, kettles of hot soup mingled with the market scents of fruits and animals and exotic spices. Stalls as solitary as closed tents during the day rolled up a wall to show bolts of cloth, toys, tools, jewels. Jugglers tossed flames; fortune-tellers spread their bright scarves, their cards and crystals. Idlers threw dice and pitched knives; great puppets strode the streets on stilts, enacted stories for a coin. Oil lamps and torches cast an illusion of day. Light plunged too easily and without warning into shadow, where things disturbing in their vagueness might or might not happen.

  Arneth could unravel that tangle of streets better than most, for during his years as a street warden he had ridden them many times. But he had not been there since he had risen to his new position; he had to scour memory as well as trust to instinct, for things changed constantly in that night world. Shops vanished; street signs disappeared; taverns turned into tanneries, houses into warehouses. Only the twisting labyrinth of the streets remained, demanding at every juncture: right or left? That night he had a truer guide than memory. Rumor traveled with him; he heard Tyramin’s name at every turn.

  He stopped at random to ask where Tyramin would appear. Everyone told him, with great certainty, something different. He followed a few people bound for Tyramin’s Illusions and Enchantments, as the magician called it. He lost them at a noisy branch of streets; all went off in contrary directions. He found another group shrugging through the crowd and fell in with them easily, for he had met several of them at court events, which his father assiduously attended. They recognized him, hailed him cheerfully. They were the richly dressed scions of Galin’s court, young men and women adventuring in the Twilight Quarter, like Arneth, following the rumors of magic.

  He confessed to the same aim; he was elegantly dressed in dark silk and leather, nothing to mark him as a warden, make those he questioned wary of him. Everyone was used to the wealthy out for amusement, riding or wandering on foot through those streets. In high, shuttered rooms with ornate balconies overlooking the river, mischief happened; as a street warden, Arneth sometimes had to pay attention to it. That night, though, as he bantered with the idle rich, disguised as one of them, nothing about him suggested that he was looking for trouble.

  Seeming only curious and vaguely bewildered, he demanded details. “Does the street we’re looking for have a name?”

  That caused gusts of amusement, both from acquaintances and passersby. A puppet on a pair of stilts, whose huge head with its mountainous cheekbones and nose hooked toward its chin reminded him of his father, turned precariously toward him, shouting, “Looking for Tyramin, are you?”

  “How do you know?” Arneth asked, amazed, and repeated the question to the further amusement of the street. “How did he know that?”

  “Everybody is, love,” an old woman roasting beef on skewers called up to him. She waved a dripping skewer. “Go that way.”

  Laughing, they followed the direction of the skewer, found another eddy of streets, crowds around a pair of dancers wearing delicate, rigid porcelain masks and spinning voluminous satin skirts into perfect circles. Arneth guided his horse carefully, seemingly oblivious to the crowd while he continued his questions, pitching them to fall anywhere.

  “But is he truly a sorcerer? I’ve heard it both ways.”

  “Yes and no,” someone shouted back at him, and bowed deeply as Arneth’s eye fell on him. “Your Lordship. There you have it, both ways.”

  “He does and he doesn’t,” one of the young courtiers said, holding Arneth’s stirrup to keep himself upright. “Tyramin only pretends. Don’t believe anything you see. This is the Twilight Quarter.”

  The dancers’ skirts ignited suddenly, spinning wheels of colored fire. Arneth reined his horse, blinking. The courtier reeled against his leg, laughing again.

  “Magic,” he shouted. The dancers were suddenly motionless, skirts swirling, settling; sparks swarmed like iridescent insects up into the night and faded. “Not magic.”

  “But where,” Arneth said, urging his horse forward and pulling the courtier off-balance again, “does he come from, this Tyramin?”

  “Nowhere,” his chorus chanted. “Everywhere.”

  “Everyone comes from somewhere. Even magicians. He wasn’t hatched out of an egg in midair.”

  An egg flew into the air out of the crowd, snagging eyes. It broke apart; a crow flew out of it, fluttered above, scolding raucously, before it turned into a drift of smoke. For a moment the street was almost silent.

  Then someone shouted, “Tyramin!”

  The crowd broke apart, pursuing the hint of magic. Arneth tried to ride with it, but it went too many directions, dragging the courtiers with it down some side street or another. Stranded in the nearly empty juncture where several streets ended or began at random, he waited for noise, a sign, a sudden flash of colored lightning to indicate his way. A porcelain face caught his eye: one of the dancers, staring at him across the emptiness. She raised a graceful hand, removed the mask, revealed a white, rigid, delicate face beneath it exactly like the mask.

  Arneth felt his own set face shift. The dancer smiled, revealing a broken tooth.

  “Your eyes watch us,” she called. “You forget to smile. That is the best disguise.”

  He smiled, and didn’t even convince himself. “Where is Tyramin?” he asked.

  She pointed at random, it seemed to him, but he went down that street anyway, and found himself at the ancient archway leading in and out of the quarter, the Twilight Gate.

  He stopped there, rubbed his eyes, and sighed, wondering whether to turn around and lose himself again, or give up for the night and go back to work. Someone on foot passed quickly through the archway before Arneth could glimpse a face. But he recognized the dark, flowing robe, its sleeves and hood edged with silver. That robe was worn by students of the School of Magic, and it should have been seen nowhere near the forbidden quarter.

  The student, he guessed, was also following the rumors of magic.

  He rode back into the darkness within the arch, turned, and watched. Nothing moved in the square but shadows cast by lamps in bright rooms above, gesturing, drinking, laughing. He raised his eyes higher, saw the pale, delicate, rigid face of the moon watchin
g him. For a moment, he stared back, challenging it to remove its mask, reveal its face.

  The idea startled a genuine smile into his face. Something shifted against the wall near him; dark pulled itself from dark. While the silver-edged shadow hesitated, listening for a crowd’s noises of wonder and delight, Arneth rode up to it.

  He said, an instant before the tensed figure decided to run, “I am the warden of the Twilight Quarter. You should be in school studying, not sneaking around alone in these streets.”

  A face looked up at him, vague in the moonlight. The assurance in the student’s voice surprised him; it was a young woman’s and sounded more mocking than alarmed.

  “If you are a quarter warden, I’m a princess. You’re only a drunken idler with nothing better to do than accost women on the streets.”

  “You’re a student of the School of Magic, and you’re not allowed in this quarter.”

  “Leave me alone. I’ll scream, the Twilight Quarter will come to my rescue, and my father will let your bones molder in his foulest dungeon.”

  “If you scream,” Arneth said calmly, “the entire quarter will know you are a student on forbidden streets, and you’ll be expelled from the school. If you leave quietly, now, no one else will need to know you’ve been here. I’ll escort you back.”

  She made an indecorous noise for a princess. “You will, will you? If you’re a quarter warden, you’re out of uniform.”

  “If you’re a princess, so are you.”

  “That’s my business.”

  “As a matter of fact, I am stone sober and working as we speak.”

  “You can’t prove it.”

  Arneth shrugged, trying to see the young woman’s face more clearly; the hood gave him little more than part of a nose, a chin, and a moving mouth. “I don’t have to prove anything,” he said. “I only have to whistle.”