by Diane Duane
Mariarta followed the road downhill to where it ran beside the Plessur, between the river and the deeply crenellated, arrow-slitted walls. She was so busy looking at those walls that she almost missed the first gate by the river, simply a broad fifteen-foot arch with huge thick wooden doors lying open inward. She walked in, glancing at the guard there. He ignored her.
The walls gave Mariarta a strange feeling of being indoors, even though the sky was quite visible above the roofs in the street. Not even an alley lay between most of the houses. The fronts of them were stuccoed, many painted with pictures in bright colors: a life of Mary on this house, a procession of cows on that one. Plastered saints with peeling haloes, solemn kings with odd clothing and helmet-like crowns, stared at her from under the house-gables as Mariarta led Catsch down the cobbled, curving street, into the center of town, toward the marketplace.
It lay right under a sheer wall, over the top of which the towers of the Bishop’s palace peered. It was an unnerving feeling, this being overshadowed: all the marketplaces Mariarta had ever been in had felt freer. But one thing they could not keep out of it, walls or no walls—the wind. Mariarta turned her attention to it, listening for words or thoughts that would guide her.
She walked slowly around the edge of the marketplace, gazing at the houses while her attention was bent elsewhere. The wind had shifted into the east; by the time she got around to the west side of the market, under the square tower of a church, the wind brought what she wanted, chat of pelt weights and the “hand” of skin, its softness. As much to the point were the smells, tanners’ smells of rank old urine, and acid enough to make the eyes smart. She smiled: a market big enough to have the tanners in it meant good prices for her skins.
The tanners were four—a narrow man, his narrow wife, and their two sons, like giants next to them. They had barely one smile among them, but Mariarta found herself unable to dislike them. The wind brought her the taste of womb-sickness in the mother, like a grinding ache in the belly, and some old unhealed heart-pain in the father, a dull weight lying inside him like a swallowed stone; and in the two sons, a twinned desperate longing to be out of this terrible place, doing something else, anything else: being cowherds, perhaps, in the mountains where the air smelt of something besides piss...
They stared at her suspiciously as she came to their stall. Mariarta greeted them courteously, started unfolding the topmost hide to show them.
“Garbage,” the father said, turning his back: “take it out of here.” This was a common gambit, but Mariarta almost didn’t understand it, he spoke Romansch so strangely. They began arguing, while the dour father pawed hide after hide and grudgingly began to admit that he might be able to make something out of them. Mariarta kept her smile in place, but she was astonished by the smell of mistrust that the wind brought her in plenty from all four. They really don’t like people they’ve never seen before, Mariarta thought. This was something she had been warned about, in Mustér. She simply hadn’t believed anyone could be so vehement about it.
The father finally got around to offering money—almost twice as much as Sievi would have. Mariarta bargained with the attitude of someone who can take her business elsewhere without a second thought, and reluctantly the tanner went up another three in copper for each hide. Mariarta accepted that. When she finished unloading Catsch, and the tanner had opened every hide and gone over it with hands and eyes, looking for the quarrel-holes, he finally paid her the money and turned his back on her without even striking hands for luck.
She walked away with Catsch behind her, feeling the window-eyes of the Bishop’s palace on her, like the eyes of the people behind her. The wind shifted again, bringing her their thoughts, every one of them a variation on “Damned foreigner....”
Mariarta sighed. She should have felt cheerful: in her purse she had money that would have paid Tschamut’s year’s grass-penny five times over. But she felt desperately lonely. Here she was, no more than thirty miles from her birthplace, and she was a “damned foreigner”. Would everyone else in this place treat her so? If they do, Mariarta thought, they can keep their ‘great city’; I’ll go somewhere else like a shot.
For a while she wandered the streets, looking for an inn. She found one in a triangular cobbled space where the view of the peering castle on the hill was blocked by a tall square church tower painted white. Making the leg of the triangle nearest it was a long row of houses, painted different browns and russets, all pushed right together as seemed the style here. One of them had a wrought iron sign bracket sticking out from between two of the windows, with a circle of iron, and inside it three men, each holding up one hand, each wearing a crown and a gilded halo, and painted robes. It was another Three Kings, like the one in Ursera. Mariarta went straight to the door, tied Catsch up, and went in.
It was darker inside than any country inn, for there were only windows at front and back: all the same, these windows were not stretched hide or shaved horn, but glass. When the innkeeper came to her, Mariarta was already so far gone in admiration that the man lost his hostility at her accent immediately. He let himself be haggled down over the cost of a week’s bed, board, and stabling. Shortly afterwards Mariarta found herself esconced not too far from the fire, in a half-niche by the wall, with a wooden cup of the local beer, and the promise of a roasted chicken.
She was left strictly alone thereafter. No one would have treated a stranger so in Mustér, she thought. Mariarta wondered how many times she might have to come back before anyone but the serving-girls would speak to her. A circle of men sat before the fireplace, some of them as young as she, some much older: they all hunched in toward that fire with their backs to her, not one of them looking her way. Mariarta felt lonely again.
When the chicken came she ate in sorrowful silence, listening to the occasional snort or chuckle of the men between her and the fire. She had finished the second leg of the chicken and was about to start work on the breast meat, feeling for once doleful that she had no one to share it with, when someone behind her said, “Bien di, Mati!”
She turned, astonished. There, shedding the first layer of his outdoor clothes, was Flisch.
“Why, bien onn, Flisch!” she said, so glad to see any friendly face that she leapt up and shook him by the hand, waving at one of the kitchen girls to bring more wine. “Here, have a drink; do you want some of my chicken?”
“Wouldn’t mind,” he said. “I thank you!” He sat and started on one of the chicken breasts.
Mariarta went to work on the other. “Flisch, it’s fine to see you, but what brings you this way? I thought you said you were going west.”
“Oh, I was, but when you said you were going off to the Bishop’s city, I thought, ‘Now why have I never thought of going that way?’” He laughed. “It’s easier, I guess, when another countryman goes before you—” He grinned slyly.
Mariarta laughed. “Well, you’ll find a market for your skins here, though they’re not as friendly as they are in Mustér. Never mind. How’s Turté?”
“Ah, she’s well,” said Flisch, “but after that—” He gestured back with his head in the general direction of Mustér. “I had to get away. The way a girl gets after something like that, you could be stifled.”
“She was worried about you.”
“Yes, Sievi told me.” He reached out to the cup that the kitchen-girl set down for him, drank deeply.
Mariarta wondered at the odd look in his eye. I wonder what else Sievi has told him? The old gossip— “No matter. Tell me how you came. How was the hunting?”
“Not as good as yours, I dare say.”
“Ah, who’s been gossipping now?”
“Oh, those folk in the market. The tanners.” Flisch wrinkled his nose. “They were waving your hides about, saying they were the best they’d seen in weeks.”
Mariarta smiled. “Oh well: good news travels.”
“Yes, they went on and on about the nice young man who brought them these fine hides—” Again that
sly grin, the sidewise look.
“Doubtless they thought they’d got the better of some mountain boy who didn’t know how to tie his purse to his belt.”
“Doubtless.” Flisch was grinning from ear to ear now. Mariarta found the expression disturbing. “Never mind,” she said. “How did you come?”
“Oh, up the Lucomagno, no further than the lower villages—then over the mountains eastward. Down by Vaz, and the main road here.”
“Why, that’s how I came. I found the hunting good enough.”
“Eight skins, I have,” Flisch said. “Not too bad. All the same, I shall go up again in the next few days. More to the point, now,” he said, drawing closer to her, lowering his voice, “I think I saw your white one.”
“What?”
“Your white chamois.” He poured more wine, finished the pitcher, waved at one of the kitchen girls who was passing. Behind him, Mariarta saw one of the men in the circle nearest the fire look over his shoulder.
“It was near Vaz,” Flisch said. “I was on the west side of the valley, and suddenly I saw it. It just stood there by a pine wood on the far mountain. I went after, and thought I was going to get a shot at it; it didn’t climb. But as soon as I got within range it ran into the woods—”
Mariarta drank thoughtfully. The place Flisch was describing was the way to the hermits’ cave.
The man who had looked at them now said, “Strangers, I couldn’t help overhearing. Where did you see this beast?”
So now everything had to be explained again, as one after another the men around the fire got interested. Slowly Mariarta found all their attention turned on her and Flisch, and she found this as unwelcome, at first, as their inattention had been. They were something she had heard of, but never seen before: soldiers. Their talk of their work in the town, a word dropped here and there, made it plain. The one closest, the man who had first spoken, a fellow with a big bushy beard and broken nose, had a plain enough shirt of coarse-woven linen: but underneath it, his chest had a hard look. Mariarta guessed there was a leather breastplate underneath. Though unarmed, the men had a dangerous look about them. Mariarta was determined to have as little to do with them as she might. Flisch, though, had no such concerns, and told them about the chamois he had seen.
“Dangerous ground that way,” one of the soldiers said, a small wiry man. “Haunted.”
“Not as badly as further east,” the first soldier said. “But this was probably just one of those pale ones.”
“Pure white it was,” Flisch said, with some heat; “whiter than your shirt.” Some laughter went around. The man with the shirt leaned back, regarding Flisch with narrow-eyed amusement.
“Dangerous to shoot at, though,” said another soldier. “They turn into things. Monsters.”
“Women, I heard,” said the man with the shirt.
“Yes,” Flisch said, “I heard that too.” He looked at Mariarta.
She had another drink of wine, hoping her sudden hot flush of fear was not as visible as it felt.
“Fellow over at Davos had that happen to him,” said the wiry soldier: “saw the white one on the cliff, shot at it, didn’t die—though the rockfall came down, nearly took him off his ledge—” He went on with the story of how the man took his second and third shots, almost dying after each one, and finally found himself sighting on a princess of Mailand, enchanted years before. Mariarta, though, had other concerns. He followed me. How far? And how does he know what he knows? What does he want? What will he do?
“Well, after all, she was Talian,” one man was saying: “you’d believe anything of those people. I mean, look at all those dwarves in Venezia, with their jewels and bags of gold. It’s not normal.”
“But men here are bold,” said Flisch, gesturing grandly, “men here know how to deal with troubles like that.” He kept coming down on the word men and glancing at Mariarta.
She put aside her cup. “It’s true enough. This young hunter is too modest to boast about it, but everybody in Mustér will tell you how he climbed the Lucomagno, some months back, where people had complained of hauntings, and he stood in the pass in the middle of the night when the Frisian Ride came through, and returned to tell about it—”
The other men were interested. Mariarta called for more wine, enjoying the sight of Flisch sitting there with his mouth half open. She told the story, leaving out not a rider or a carven sword. The soldiers watched her with pleasure, either skeptically or like men enjoying a good lie. Flisch settled down to smiling and looking modest: though the smile had a simmering look under it.
When she was done, one man, the one with the shirt, called for more wine. “You’ve been a busy young man, with such adventures,” said he, raising his cup to Flisch. “And you were in Mustér to hear the tale?” he said to Mariarta.
“I was there,” Mariarta said, looking at Flisch: he shifted in his seat. “It’s all true.”
“Things get stranger as the winter draws in,” said the wiry man. “Maybe such a bold young man ought to go try his luck at the Wish-hole.”
“What’s that?” Flisch said.
The wiry man sat back in his seat. “South of here, east of the main road, there’s a circle of mountains. No people live in the center valley—there’s just a herder’s hut. I think they call the place Arosa. This Arosa hut is in the middle of the circle. But higher, in one of the valleys, reaching right across from spur to spur of that big mountain at the back of the circle, Weisshorn they call it, there’s a wall. The wall has a door in it. And the door can only be opened by a golden key. Now you have to be a Sunday’s child—”
“Don’t tell lies, Gunt’, you don’t either,” said the bushy-bearded man in the white shirt. “Giachen Mello from the townlands supposedly brought back that cow of his, and he was born on Tuesday.”
“Whatever, Baseli,” said Gunt’, “he had to find the key, and get the door open. Once you get it open, in the very mountain there’s a big room all hollowed out, piled with gold and gems: and there’s a dwarf who guards it. And a beautiful maiden, too, enchanted, from the olden times. You have to tell the dwarf your choice. You pick the gold and jewels, or else this golden cowbell that’s there, or else the maiden. And depending on which you pick, you either get incredibly rich, or the dwarf gives you the most beautiful cow in the world, or else you get to be lucky in everything for the rest of your life.”
Mariarta looked thoughtfully at the soldier Gunt’. “It’s a strange tale. I don’t know what day I was born on: but I’m bold enough to go to this mountain-ring and seek the wall and door, to tell if the story’s true. What about you, Flisch?”
They all looked at him. “Why, certainly,” he said, stammering, “I’ll go see as well.”
“Tomorrow morning, then,” Mariarta said to the soldier Gunt’. “If the weather holds. Does the story say how you’re supposed to find this golden key?”
The soldier shook his head with a smile. “Doubtless you’ll tell me when you come back.”
Everyone drank to Flisch’s and Mariarta’s boldness; Mariarta drank too, but not as much as she saw Flisch was drinking. That suited her well, for if Flisch had somehow come upon her secret, she preferred he tell it to people while dead drunk. Anyone who heard it would be that much less likely to believe him.
The talk went around for a while. After an hour or so, as darkness fell, Mariarta found herself bereft of even Flisch’s unnerving company: he had fallen asleep in his chair, wine-sodden. She found the bushy-bearded soldier, Baseli, looking at her. “Your companion,” he said, “seems weary from his travels.”
“He’s not usually my companion,” Mariarta said, “but yes, he seems to have come a long way.”
“You don’t seem happy about it.”
“I am mountain-bred, and always did find it hard to mind other people’s business.” She smiled, to take the sting out of her words. “But if I’m right, that is part of your business: so I’ll say you ask courteously.” And she looked at the leather cuirass unde
rneath his shirt.
Baseli laughed. “You are no danger,” he said, “so I think: but it’s my business to notice people. I am a Captain of the Bishop’s guard, and of the watch; these are some of my men.” He glanced at Flisch, who was now snoring open-mouthed. “You know each other well?”
“Not well. We met in Mustér.”
“And he followed you here. Do you have a quarrel?”
“No. At least, I can’t think of one.”
“That’s well,” Baseli said. “I advise you not to have quarrels here: my master looks harshly on such, especially when blood is drawn. He feels it reflects badly on the peace of his town.”
“We will be away tomorrow,” Mariarta said, “if Flisch here doesn’t lose heart.”
Baseli nodded. “Out of sight of the town walls, out of our fields, you can do as you like.”
Mariarta had another drink of her wine. “Why was it you started to talk to us when you heard of the white chamois?”
Baseli laughed. “I heard something else that interested me more than what my men were saying,” he said. The far door opened; on the draft that came down the room past Baseli, Mariarta heard, The sound of anger—
Mariarta nodded. “It’s a strange old story,” she said, finishing her wine. “If I’m to find the truth of yours, it’s an early start for me. And him.” She got up.