The Cutting Edge

Home > Other > The Cutting Edge > Page 14
The Cutting Edge Page 14

by Dave Duncan


  Thaile had thought that shed drunk all the orange juice, but the golden cup was full again, so she took another drink. It was very strange to be eating all these wonderful things with a sorcerer. She wished Gaib and Frial were there to enjoy the meal, also. They had probably never seen its like in their lives. She knew she hadn't.

  "Try this," Jain muttered, pushing a golden plate over. "It was a very terrible war and we pixies got the worst of it, until we almost died out altogether. It wasn't just armies that caused the trouble. Both sides used huge amounts of sorcery. There were dragons and storms of fire and monsters. Plagues of snakes. The ground opened and swallowed whole cities. Over there-" He pointed toward her secret place. "-are ruins of a great castle. You can't see anything now except the tumbled stones, but once it was a vast fortress."

  His eyes twinkled, hinting that he knew of her secret place and knew she hadn't guessed what it was made of.

  "The war went on for many years, until Ulien died. He was succeeded by a pixie, named Keef. Keef stopped the war and sent all the Outsiders away. Keef founded the College. Keef was the first Keeper! "

  Thaile nodded again. She wondered what all this history had to do with her. It was sort of interesting, though, and oddly exciting, in a way she could not quite place.

  "Ever since then," Jain said, "for a thousand years, there has been a Keeper at the College. The Keeper keeps the demons out-the other races out. We live in peace, here in Thume, because of the Keeper. You know all that, of course."

  He stopped smiling for the first time since he'd started his lecture. "For example. That battle you Felt last year-the Keeper Felt it also. It didn't concern her, or us. What the darks and the reds do to each other is their business. But a lot of the losers ran away into the mountains. Many died of wounds, or the cold, but a few days later the survivors started dribbling through the passes, down into Thume."

  Thaile paused with a piece of juicy mango halfway to her mouth.

  "Alarmed?" he said. "Yes, it should alarm you. There were hundreds of men, all starving and all armed. All violent men, warriors. If they'd had the chance, they would have brought death and rape ... do you know what rape is? "

  She nodded quickly.

  And he nodded, also. "Even pixies do that, I'm afraid. But not often. Not like what would have happened ... Anyway, the Keeper dealt with them. They never arrived in Thume, Thaile. Not one. It's not nice, but it's necessary. Understand?"

  "Yes. I think so."

  Jain smiled again, comfortingly. "Well, that's the bad side of the Keeper's job. Fortunately, it doesn't happen very often. Like to see some magic? "

  Not being sure she did, she said, "Isn't all this food magic?"

  "Yes, it is. Of course it is. But I'm going to show you something-someone. About a month ago an imp ... that's the name for the dark-haired demons, or some of the dark-haired demons. This imp came wandering into Thume on his own. Actually on a horse, but not with anyone else. "

  He paused until she timorously asked, "Why?"

  Jain chuckled and wiped his fingers on the grass. "Just out of nosiness. Nobody Outside knows what happens in Thume. They know people disappear here, but they don't know why. The Keeper's power prevents them from finding out. And this man is an imp and imps are extremely inquisitive people. Worse than jackdaws, imps. So I'm told. Anyway, at the moment he's about four or five days' walk north of here, still riding his horse, exploring Thume. I'll show you! Watch."

  He pointed and a mist seemed to form within the trees where he pointed. Then there was a sunlit clearing there, where there hadn't been a moment before, and a man on a horse, ambling along.

  She gasped and was about to jump up.

  "It's all right," the recorder said. "He can't see you. He's a long way away, really, like I said. That's a demon for you. " She sank back to stare at the rider. His horse continued to plod, without ever going anywhere. The man was strumming on a lute, but she couldn't hear any music-nor the horse's hooves, she realized. The horse was heavy laden, the man lightly dressed in a bright-colored shirt and brown pants.

  The man looked very ugly, but not especially evil. He had black hair and a stubbly black beard. His nose was long and pointy, his ears small and rounded. He seemed chubby all over, and he sat in the saddle like a sack of yams. The strangest, ugliest thing about him was his eyes. They were shaped like melon seeds and set level, in a straight line across his face. "Ugh!" she said. "I don't think I like demons."

  Jain laughed. The vision faded away. "That one's harmless enough. His name's Uliopo, not that it matters. He's a minstrel and a very bad one. He's harmless."

  She thought about that, eating a piece of cake she had missed earlier. "What's going to happen to him?"

  "That's up to the Keeper, but she's let him live this long, so I expect he'll continue to go around in circles for another month or two and then arrive at where he wants to go. "

  "Circles?"

  Her companion laughed again, reaching for a tall silver bottle to pour himself a drink. "Yes. He came from the north and I think he wants to go south, but he's been going round and round and round. He doesn't know that. He hasn't seen anyone at all, or any signs of people." He peered quizzically at Thane over the rim of his silver cup.

  "The Keeper is playing games with him?"

  He chuckled. "I suppose so. The Keeper does what she wants and I don't question her! I just wanted you to know that the Keeper is merciful sometimes."

  Thaile wiped her mouth on her arm. She could not have eaten another crumb. "Why do you want me to know that?"

  "Because you have Faculty."

  That was what shed been afraid of.

  The wanting-to-laugh feeling had gone, but she wasn't frightened. Perhaps that was more magic, or else she'd accepted that this strange man wasn't going to harm her. She still couldn't detect any Feelings from him. Down at the Place, her father was still very unhappy, but her mother was hurrying back. That was good.

  "Listen," Jain said softly. "I'm just like you. I was born at the Hoos Place, which you won't ever have heard of, because it's very far away, on the other side of Thume. My folks were just as poor as yours. Well, almost as poor-we did own an ox. My family is Gifted, like yours is, so when I began to warble and get fuzzy-lipped, I had to keep a Death Watch, as you did. An old man died, as Phain did, and told me his word of power, as she told you hers. I'd always had a talent of sorts and suddenly I was a genius with it-because I have Faculty. I have a Gift for occult power. As you do."

  She studied him for a moment, then said, "What sort of talent? I didn't have Feeling before. "

  "No. But you must have been a very sympathetic sort of person, keyed in to people's moods. With a word of power, that became Feeling. "

  "What's your talent?" she demanded, thinking he wanted her to ask.

  Shed been right-he grinned. "Lying! I'd always been a sly little beggar. After I got the word, I could talk anyone into believing anything! I could convince my dad the sky was green, if I wanted to. "

  To her astonishment, she was smiling back at him. "That doesn't 'zactly give me lots of confidence in what you're telling me, you know. "

  He chuckled. "I told you-I'm a mage now. Now I could make you believe it without actually saying anything. " He became serious again. "One word of power makes a genius of you. Two words of power makes an adept. That lets you be good at almost any mundane skill, a sort of superperson. Sometimes, if you have a real Faculty, you start to pick up some occult abilities then, too. I had found I had a fair insight. That means I could read people's thoughts. Usually only a mage or a sorcerer can do that. Don't worry-I rarely do. "

  She thought this had been one of the rare times, though. If he read that thought, he didn't reply to it.

  "And three words make you a mage. I told you I'm a mage. I know three words. I can do magic, like showing you that imp. Probably I'll be told a fourth word, when one becomes available. Four words make a full-blown sorcerer. "

  Thaile noticed another pi
ece of cake she had overlooked and decided she might just be able to squeeze it in. She was feeling that odd sort of excitement again.

  "And me?" she asked with her mouth full.

  Jain turned to look where the sun was slipping low in the western sky. He pointed that way, then stretched his arms overhead and rubbed them, as if he were growing stiff with sitting. "You have Faculty, without a doubt. You have to come to the College before your next birthday."

  Which was what shed feared ever since the Death Watch. She didn't want to go to the College, whatever and wherever it was. She wanted to find a good spot to be a Place and then a good man to share it with. Usually the boys liked to find the Place, but it wasn't unknown for girls to, well, sort of lead them to likely sites. She wouldn't mind the other way, either, if a quiet young man with wide shoulders and thick arms and a kind smile came by and said he'd found a great Place and would she come with him and look at it. . .

  That was what life was for. A pixie was a flower that rooted in a place and grew and blossomed there and sent out its seeds in the wind to root in places of their own.

  This College Jain talked of must hold dozens of peoplerecorders and mages and sorcerers and Gods-knew what else. A seed couldn't root in a patch all crowded with weeds!

  "I didn't want to, either," Jain said sympathetically. "I was a little older than you. I had a Place all picked out already and I'd even shown it to a girl or two. But I had to go. That's the law. I was mad and rebellious and sorry for myself. When I got to the College, I realized what I'd been missing all my life. And now-now I can't bear the thought of ever leaving. Oh, Thaile! Human beings don't have to live in chicken coops. At the College you'll wash in hot water and wear fine dresses and eat fine food! Cake, even! You'll sleep in real beds, you'll ... I don't suppose you have the faintest idea what a real bed looks like, do you?"

  She shook her head, pouting.

  "Then trust me. Trust the Keeper! You will be very, very happy and never have any regrets." His yellow eyes narrowed wolfishly. "And you haven't any choice, anyway, remember! The Keeper knows of you; the Keeper never sleeps. Don't try anything foolish, because it won't work."

  She cringed before his slitted gaze.

  "Not me," he said. "I'm only a mage. I couldn't put a compulsion on you that would last until you got to the College. But the Keeper will not be defied, Thaile. And stay away from old people, or sick people. Understand why?"

  She shook her head, trying to edge backward off the cloak, away from him.

  "Can you remember the word the old woman told you?" She nodded. It was a long, gibberishly thing that didn't seem to mean anything, but she hadn't forgotten it.

  "Can you repeat it?"

  She licked her lips and said, "That's not allowed."

  He smiled. "Right. It isn't. But even if it were, you probably couldn't. Words are very hard to say, except when you're dying. That's why we have Death

  Watches. Whose idea was it to go visit at the Vool Place?"

  His rapid changes of subject bewildered her. "Idea? I don't know! That was ages ago. "

  He scowled. "Maybe it was only coincidence, then. But at the College there's tales of a Faculty so strong it can actually seek out words. That's very rare, if it's even possible. The most powerful of sorcerers can't detect words directly! So maybe your case was just coincidence. "

  She didn't think he thought it was, though.

  "Just in case," he said, "you must stay away from old people and sick people. You don't want to go picking up any more trash words. Can't lose a word, once you know it!"

  He smiled again, but then her attention was grabbed away by a huge explosion of terror and pity from Frial and an upwelling of anger and pain from Gaib.

  "Your mother's home," Jain remarked, rising.

  Thaile sprang up also and backed away a few steps, nauseated by her parents' distress. "Tell me! Tell me what you did to him!"

  The recorder snapped his fingers and his cloak floated up from the ground to adjust itself on his shoulders. The dishes and food had all vanished without Thaile noticing.

  "You'll be working party tricks of your own in a year or two, you know. " He smirked cheerfully and placed a broadbrimmed hat on his head at a jaunty angle.

  "What did you do to my father?" she shouted.

  "I gave him a fright," Jain said sulkily. "If you want to cheer him up, you can tell him that it'll wear off by morning. I'm only a mage and that's the best I can do on transformations. Thane!"

  She had started to run. His command seemed to root her toes in the turf, but she did not turn.

  He came closer, right behind her, and she began to shake. She had become so used to Feeling other people's emotions that he frightened her, because he was masked from her. She could smell a strange flowery scent about him, mixed with sweat.

  "Forget them, Thaile. Your father is an ignorant, smallminded peasant. Your mother can't be much better, if she has tolerated that oaf all her life. They live like beasts and they've brought you up to think that's the right way to live. Well, it's not! Come to the College as soon as you can. Don't wait until you're sixteen. Come soon. Come and learn how to be a human being. Come and learn your destiny. Forget these churls."

  Forget her family, her home? Never!

  "There is more to life than rearing babies, Thaile!"

  She listened to the silence for a whole minute before she realized that the recorder had disappeared and she was alone. She took off down the hill as fast as she could run.

  Destiny obscure:

  Let not ambition mock their useful toil,

  Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;

  Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile

  The short and simple annals of the poor.

  — Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

  FIVE

  Hostages to fortune

  1

  The sun was returning to Krasnegar.

  In midwinter there was almost no daylight at all. Sunlight appeared as a bright blur in the south for a short while at noon and then was gone, like a brief candle in a crypt. At the dark of the moon, the sky was an iron bowl bearing only a glitter of stars and the nightmare twitch of aurora. Those were too arrogant to illuminate human affairs, as if the sins of the climate were none of their business.

  A full moon, though, never set. The stars and aurora fled before it. It soared through the sky, big as a silver plate, shedding a helpful blue light on the snow, so that men could emerge briefly from their lairs to view the stricken world.

  The second full moon after midwinter was the traditional date of the Timber Meet, a custom that had developed in Inos' reign. She had instituted winter expeditions to obtain lumber from the forests to the south, using horse sleds to bring the trunks over the bare hills to Krasnegar. Unfortunately, the forests belonged to the goblins. Goblins, as Rap had been known to remark, were green but not stupid. By the time he had married the queen and taken charge of such masculine matters as tree-cutting expeditions, the goblins had awakened to the value of lumber as a trade item.

  That winter the first Krasnegarian team to venture south was quietly surrounded by about five times as many goblins, all armed with spears or bows and anxious to discuss the matter of stumpage. Goblins' well-deserved reputation for being enthusiastic torturers added a certain urgency to the negotiations.

  A mutually acceptable method of payment was devised, and it had since evolved into an annual event. The goblins themselves were far more efficient in the cold than even jotnar, worlds better than either imps or horses. Teams of goblins cut the trees, then hauled the sleds by moonlight to Krasnegar. Rarely a blizzard would cause postponement, but if the weather behaved itself, the goblins would come to the Timber Meet without fail. They scarcely seemed to notice the cold, although it could bum a man's lungs. The sled teams were rumored to hold a nonstop three-day race all the way from the edge of the forest. The token prizes awarded in that annual event were said to be fingernails, or ears.

&
nbsp; As Rap trotted across the causeway, the sun was a brilliant blur in the ice fog, low to the south. The moon would rise right after sunset. His path wound among a nightmare jumble of ice floes, but the bay itself was worse, with the added danger of falling through to certain death.

  Ahead of him, a single line of smoke rose vertically from one of the little cottages that marked the shore. Three sleds of lumber stood waiting for unloading, and forty or fifty goblins formed a dark pattern against the whiteness. Some of them were moving, but most were just sitting in the snow, talking. If Rap tried that, he would be dead in ten minutes.

  Panting hard, he reached the shore, where the going was easier. Across the bay, the improbable peak of Krasnegar jutted skyward, blurred by all the smoke from its chimneys, crowned by its castle. His castle. The town seemed to shine in the watery sunlight, glittering behind the ice haze.

  A group of three men had separated from the others and he headed toward them, wondering if the one in the middle could be Death Bird himself.

  Yes, there were times that Rap regretted his decision not to be a sorcerer. Even with the feeble powers that were all he could summon now, he would know at once whether the middle goblin was Death Bird. Of course he would also know what the man was thinking and that would take all the fun out of the negotiations. He sometimes wondered how long his resolution would last if a meeting such as this one ever turned nasty. Did he have the courage to die a mundane as a matter of principle?

  He came to a puffing halt, blowing outrageous clouds of steam and running sweat under his furs-he was not as young as he used to be. Three sets of unfriendly, oddly angular eyes regarded him through the slits of the buckskin masks. Of course they could see no more of him than he could of them. They were short, broad, hard men; none of the three was tall enough to be Death Bird.

  Rap dragged up his memories of the rasping goblin dialect. "Am Flat Nose. Speak for town. "

  "Speak chief!" the middle goblin snapped. "Am chief."

  Mollified, the spokesman announced himself, "Blood Needle of Porcupines." He and Rap each advanced a pace and embraced. Rap winced at the pressure, almost gagging at the reek of the bear grease that goblins used as winter underwear.

 

‹ Prev