by Vernor Vinge
Jagit had come to Sharn from a land still farther east, and much more primitive. He had stayed and learned what he could of Sharn’s magic. The goods he brought to Sharn were popular and had brought high prices; during the time he had spent in the enchanted land he had acquired a small collection of the weaker Sharnish spells. Then he left, to seek a market for these acquisitions—some land where magic was known, but not so deeply as in Sharn.
As the peddler finished his tale, Wim saw that the sun had nearly reached the ridge of the hills to the west before them. He walked on for several minutes, squinting into the sunset for traces of lost Sharn.
The trail curved through ninety degrees, headed down across a small valley. Half hidden in the deepening shadow that now spread over the land, a precarious wooden bridge crossed a stream. Beyond the bridge the pines climbed the darkened hillside into sudden sunlight. Along the far ridgeline, not more than a mile away, ten or twelve immense, solitary trees caught the light, towering over the forest.
“Mr. Jagged, you’re the best liar I ever met.” Stubbornly Wim swallowed his awe, felt the peddler’s unnerving eyes on his face as he pointed across the valley. “Just beyond that ridgeline’s where we figure on putting up tonight. A place called Grandfather Grove. Could be you never seen trees that big even in Sharn!”
The peddler peered into the leveling sunlight. “Could be,” he said. “I’d surely like to see such trees, anyhow.”
They descended from the sunlight into rising darkness. Wim glimpsed Ounze’s high felt hat as he walked out of the shadow on the other side of the valley, but none of the other gang members were visible. Wim and the peddler were forced to leave Witch Hollow Trail, and the going became more difficult for horse and wagon; but they reached the edge of the Grandfather Grove in less than half an hour, passing one of the soaring trees, and then two, and three. The dwarfed, spindly pines thinned and finally were gone. Ahead of them were only the grandfather trees, their shaggy striated trunks russet and gold in the dying light. The breeze that had crossed the valley with them, the roaring of the stream behind them, all sounds faded into cathedral silence, leaving only the cool, still air and the golden trees. Wim stopped and bent his head back to catch even a glimpse of the lowest branches, needled with pungent golden-green. This was their land, and he knew more than one tale that told of how the trees guarded it, kept pestiferous creatures away, kept the air cool and the soil fragrant and faintly moist throughout the summer.
“Over here.” Hanaban’s voice came muted from their left. They rounded the twenty-foot base of a tree, and found Hanaban and Bathecar, setting a small fire with kindling they had carried into the grove—Wim knew the bark of the grandfather trees was almost unburnable. The struggling blaze illuminated an immense pit of darkness behind them: the gutted trunk of an ancient grandfather tree, that formed a living cave-shelter for the night’s camp.
By the time they had eaten and rotated lookouts, the sun had set. Wim smothered the fire, and the only light was from the sickle moon following the sun down into the west.
The peddler made no move to bed down, Wim noticed with growing irritation. He sat with legs crossed under him in the shadow of his wagon; motionless and wearing a dark coat against the chill, he was all but invisible, but Wim thought the little man was looking up into the sky. His silence stretched on, until Wim thought he would have to pretend to sleep himself before the peddler would. Finally Jagit stood and walked to the rear of his wagon. He opened a tiny hatch and removed two objects.
“What’s them?” Wim asked, both curious and suspicious.
“Just a bit of harmless magic.” He set one of the contraptions down on the ground, what seemed to be a long rod with a grip at one end. Wim came up to him, as he put the second object against his eye. The second contraption looked much more complex. It glinted, almost sparkled in the dim moonlight, and Wim thought he saw mirrors and strange rulings on its side. A tiny bubble floated along the side in the tube. The peddler stared through the gadget at the scattering of pale stars visible between the trees. At last he set the device back inside the wagon, and picked up the rod. Wim watched him cautiously as the other walked toward the cave tree; the rod looked too much like a weapon.
Jagit fiddled at the grip of the rod, and an eerie whine spread through the grove. The screaming faded into silence again, but Wim was sure that now the front of the rod was spinning. Jagit set it against the moon-silvered bark of the cave tree, and the tip of the rod began to bore effortlessly into the massive trunk.
Wim’s voice quavered faintly. “That…that there some of your Sharnish magic, Mr. Jagged?”
The peddler chuckled softly, finishing his experiment. “It ain’t hardly that. A Sharnish enchantment is a lot craftier, a lot simpler looking. This here’s just a simple spell for reading the Signs.”
“Um.” Wim wavered almost visibly, his curiosity doing battle with his fear. There was a deep, precise hole in the cave tree. Just because a fellow’s strange, Han, don’t mean he’s got an evil eye…instinctively Wim’s fingers crossed. Because it looked like the peddler might not be the world’s biggest liar; and that meant—“Maybe I better check how the boys is settled.”
When the peddler didn’t answer, Wim turned and walked briskly away. At least he hoped that was how it looked; he felt like running. He passed Ounze, half-hidden behind a gigantic stump; Wim said nothing, but motioned for him to continue his surveillance of the peddler and his wagon. The rest stood waiting at a medium-sized grandfather tree nearly a hundred yards from the cave tree, the spot they had agreed on last night in Darkwood Corners. Wim moved silently across the springy ground, rounding the ruins of what must once have been one of the largest trees in the grove: a four-hundred-foot giant that disease and the years had brought crashing down. The great disc of its shattered root system rose more than thirty feet into the air, dwarfing him as he dropped down heavily beside Hanaban.
Bathecar Henley whispered. “Ounze and Sothead I left out as guards.”
Wim nodded. “It don’t hardly matter. We’re not going to touch that peddler.”
“What!” Bathecar’s exclamation was loud with surprise. He lowered his voice only slightly as he continued. “One man? You’re ascared of one man?”
Wim motioned threateningly for silence. “You heard me. Hanaban here was right—that Jagged is just too damn dangerous. He’s a warlock, he’s got an evil eye. And he’s got some kind of knife back there that can cut clean through a grandfather tree! And the way he talks, that’s just the least…”
The others’ muttered curses cut him off. Only Hanaban Kroy kept silent.
“You’re crazy, Wim,” the hulking shadow of Shorty said. “We’ve walked fifteen miles today. And you’re telling us it was for nothing! It’d be easier to farm for a living.”
“We’ll still get something, but it looks like we’ll have to go honest for a while. I figure on guiding him down, say to where the leaf forests start, and then asking pretty please for half of what he promised us back at the Corners.”
“I sure as hell ain’t going to follow nobody that far down toward the Valley.” Bathecar frowned.
“Well, then, you can just turn around and head back. I’m running this here gang, Bathecar, don’t you forget it. We already got something out of this deal, them silver balls he give us as first payment—”
Something went hisss and then thuk: Hanaban sprawled forward, collapsed on the moonlit ground beyond the tree’s shadow. A crossbow bolt protruded from his throat.
As Wim and Bathecar scrabbled for the cover of the rotting root system, Shorty rose and snarled, “That damn peddler!” It cost him his life; three arrows smashed into him where he stood, and he collapsed across Hanaban.
Wim heard their attackers closing in on them, noisily confident. From what he could see, he realized they were all armed with crossbows; his boys didn’t stand a chance against odds like that. He burrowed his way deeper into the clawing roots, felt a string of beads snap and shower over hi
s hand. Behind him Bathecar unslung his own crossbow and cocked it.
Wim looked over his shoulder, and then, for the length of a heartbeat, he saw the silvery white of the moon-painted landscape blaze with harshly shadowed blue brilliance. He shook his head, dazzled and wondering; until amazement was driven from his mind by sudden screams. He began to curse and pray at the same time.
But then their assailants had reached the fallen tree. Wim heard them thrusting into the roots, shrank back farther out of reach of their knives. Another scream echoed close and a voice remarked, “Hey, Rufe, I got the bastard as shot Rocker last fall.”
A different voice answered, “That makes five then. Everybody excepting the peddler and Wim Buckry.”
Wim held his breath, sweating. He recognized the second voice—Axl Bork, the oldest of the Bork brothers. For the last two years Wim’s gang had cut into the Bork clan’s habitual thievery, and up until tonight his quick-wittedness had kept them safe from the Borks’ revenge. But tonight—how had he gone so wrong tonight? Damn that peddler!
He heard hands thrusting again among the roots, closer now. Then abruptly fingers caught in his hair. He pulled away, but another pair of hands joined the first, catching him by the hair and then the collar of his leather jerkin. He was hauled roughly from the tangle of roots and thrown down. He scrambled to his feet, was kicked in the stomach before he could run off. He fell gasping back onto the ground, felt his knife jerked from the sheath; three shadowy figures loomed over him. The nearest placed a heavy foot on his middle and said, “Well, Wim Buckry. You just lie still, boy. It’s been a good night, even if we don’t catch that peddler. You just got a little crazy with greed, boy. My cousins done killed every last one of your gang.” Their laughter raked him. “Fifteen minutes and we done what we couldn’t do the last two years.
“Lew, you take Wim here over to that cave tree. Once we find that peddler we’re going to have us a little fun with the both of them.”
Wim was pulled to his feet and then kicked, sprawling over the bodies of Hanaban and Shorty. He struggled to his feet and ran, only to be tripped and booted by another Bork. By the time he reached the cave tree his right arm hung useless at his side, and one eye was blind with warm sticky blood.
The Borks had tried to rekindle the campfire. Three of them stood around him in the wavering light; he listened to the rest searching among the trees. He wondered dismally why they couldn’t find one wagon on open ground, when they’d found every one of his boys.
One of the younger cousins—scarcely more than fifteen—amused himself half-heartedly by thrusting glowing twigs at Wim’s face. Wim slapped at him, missed, and at last one of the other Borks knocked the burning wood from the boy’s hand; Wim remembered that Axl Bork claimed first rights against anyone who ran afoul of the gang. He squirmed back away from the fire and propped himself against the dry resilient trunk of the cave tree, stunned with pain and despair. Through one eye he could see the other Borks returning empty-handed from their search. He counted six Borks altogether, but by the feeble flame-cast light he couldn’t make out their features. The only one he could have recognized for sure was Axl Bork, and his runty silhouette was missing. Two of the clansmen moved past him into the blackness of the cave tree’s heart, he heard them get down on their hands and knees to crawl around the bend at the end of the passage. The peddler could have hidden back there, but his wagon would have filled the cave’s entrance. Wim wondered again why the Borks couldn’t find that wagon; and wished again that he’d never seen it at all.
The two men emerged from the tree just as Axl limped into the shrinking circle of firelight. The stubby bandit was at least forty years old, but through those forty years he had lost his share of fights, and walked slightly bent-over; Wim knew that his drooping hat covered a hairless skull marred with scars and even one dent. The eldest Bork cut close by the fire, heedlessly sending dust and unburnable bark into the guttering flames. “Awright, where in the mother-devil blazes you toad-gets been keeping your eyes? You was standing ever’ whichway from this tree, you skewered every one of that damn Buckry gang excepting Wim here. Why ain’t you found that peddler?”
“He’s gone, Ax, gone.” The boy who had been playing with Wim seemed to think that was a revelation. But Axl was not impressed, his backhand sent the boy up against the side of the tree.
One of the other silhouetted figures spoke hesitantly. “Don’t go misbelieving me when I tell you this, Axl…but I was looking straight at this here cave tree when you went after them others. I could see that peddler clear as I see you now, standing right beside his wagon and his horse. Then all of a sudden there was this blue flash—I tell you. Ax, it was bright—and for a minute I couldn’t see nothing, and then when I could again, why there wasn’t hide nor hair of that outlander.”
“Hmm.” The elder Bork took this story without apparent anger. He scratched under his left armpit and began to shuffle around the dying fire toward where Wim lay. “Gone, eh? Just like that. He sounds like a right good prize…” He reached suddenly and caught Wim by the collar, dragged him toward the fire. Stopping just inside the ring of light, he pulled Wim up close to his face. The wide, sagging brim of his hat threw his face into a hollow blackness that was somehow more terrible than any reality.
Seeing Wim’s expression, he laughed raspingly, and did not turn his face toward the fire. “It’s been a long time, Wim, that I been wanting to learn you a lesson. But now I can mix business and pleasure. We’re just gonna burn you an inch at a time until you tell us where your friend lit out to.”
WIM BARELY STIFLED the whimper he felt growing in his throat; Axl Bork began to force his good hand inch by inch into the fire. All he wanted to do was to scream the truth, to tell them the peddler had never made him party to his magic. But he knew the truth would no more be accepted than his cries for mercy; the only way out was to lie—to lie better than he ever had before. The tales the peddler had told him during the day rose from his mind to shape his words, “Just go ahead. Ax! Get your fun. I know I’m good as dead. But so’s all of you—” The grip stayed firm on his shoulders and neck, but the knotted hand stopped forcing him toward the fire. He felt his own hand scorching in the super-heated air above the embers. Desperately he forced the pain into the same place with his fear and ignored it. “Why d’you think me and my boys didn’t lay a hand on that peddler all day long? Just so’s we could get ambushed by you?” His laughter was slightly hysterical. “The truth is we was scared clean out of our wits! That foreigner’s a warlock, he’s too dangerous to go after. He can reach straight into your head, cloud your mind, make you see what just plain isn’t. He can kill you, just by looking at you kinda mean-like. Why”—and true inspiration struck him—“why, he could even have killed one of your perty cousins, and be standing here right now pretending to be a Bork, and you’d never know it till he struck you dead…”
Axl swore and ground Wim’s hand into the embers. Even expecting it, Wim couldn’t help himself; his scream was loud and shrill. After an instant as long as forever Axl pulled his hand from the heat. The motion stirred the embers, sending a final spurt of evil reddish flame up from the coals before the fire guttered out, leaving only dim ruby points to compete with the moonlight. For a long moment no one spoke; Wim bit his tongue to keep from moaning. The only sounds were a faint rustling breeze, hundreds of feet up among the leafy crowns of the grandfather trees—and the snort of a horse somewhere close by.
“Hey, we ain’t got no horses,” someone said uneasily.
Seven human figures stood in the immense spreading shadow of the cave tree, lined in faint silver by the setting moon. The Borks stood very still, watching one another—and then Wim realized what they must just have noticed themselves: there should have been eight Bork kinsmen. Somehow the peddler had eliminated one of the Borks during the attack, so silently, so quickly, that his loss had gone unnoticed. Wim shuddered, suddenly remembering a flare of unreal blue-white light, and the claims he had just mad
e for the peddler. If one Bork could be killed so easily, why not two? In which case—
“He’s here, pretending to be one of you!” Wim cried, his voice cracking.
And he could almost feel their terror echoing back and forth, from one to another, growing—until one of the shortest of the silhouettes broke and ran out into the moonlight. He got only about twenty feet, before he was brought down by a crossbow quarrel in the back. Even as the fugitive crumpled onto the soft, silver dirt a second crossbow thunked and another of the brothers fell dead across Wim’s feet.
“That was Clyne, you…warlock!” More bows lowered around the circle.
“Hold on now!” shouted Axl. There were five Borks left standing; two bodies sprawled unmoving on the ground. “The peddler got us in his spell. We got to keep our sense and figure out which of us he’s pretendin’ to be.”
“But Ax, he ain’t just in disguise, we woulda seen which one he is…he—he can trick us into believing he’s anybody!”
Trapped beneath the corpse, all Wim could see were five shadows against the night. Their faces were hidden from the light, and bulky clothing disguised any differences. He bit his lips against the least sound of pain; now was no time to remind the remaining Borks of Wim Buckry—But the agony of his hand pulsed up his arm until he felt a terrible dizziness wrench the blurring world away and his head drooped…