by Vernor Vinge
He opened his eyes again and saw that only three men stood now in the glade. Two more had died; the newest corpse still twitched on the ground.
Axl’s voice was shrill with rage. “You…monster! You done tricked all of us into killing each other!”
“No, Ax, I had to shoot him. It was the peddler, I swear. Turn him over. Look! He shot Jan after you told us to hold off—”
“Warlock!” a third voice cried. “All of them dead—!” Two crossbows came down and fired simultaneously. Two men fell.
Axl stood silent and alone among the dead for a long moment. The moon had set at last, and the starlight was rare and faint through the shifting branches of the grandfather tree far overhead. Wim lay still as death, aware of the smell of blood and sweat and burned flesh. And the sound of footsteps, approaching. Sick with fear he looked up at the dark stubby form of Axl Bork.
“Still here? Good.” A black-booted foot rolled the dead body from his legs. “Well, boy, you better leave me look at that hand.” The voice belonged to Jagit Katchetooriantz.
“Uh.” Wim began to tremble. “Uh. Mr. Jagged…is that…you?”
A light appeared in the hand of the peddler who had come from Sharn.
Wim fainted.
EARLY MORNING FILLED the Grandfather Grove with dusty shafts of light. Wim Buckry sat propped against the cave tree’s entrance, sipping awkwardly at a cup of something hot and bitter held in a bandaged hand. His other hand was tucked through his belt, to protect a sprained right shoulder. Silently he watched the peddler grooming the dappled cart horse; glanced for the tenth time around the sunlit grove, where no sign of the last night’s events marred the quiet tranquility of the day. Like a bad dream the memory of his terror seemed unreal to him now, and he wondered if that was more witchery, like the drink that had eased the pains of his body. He looked down, where dried blood stained his pants. I’ll take care of the remains, the peddler had said. It was real, all right—all of the Borks. And all of his boys. He thought wistfully for a moment of the jewelry that had gone into the ground with them; shied away from a deeper sense of loss beneath it.
The peddler returned to the campfire, kicked dirt over the blaze. He had had no trouble in getting a fire to burn. Wim drew his feet up; the dark eyes looked questioningly at his sullen face.
“Mr. Jagged”—there was no trace of mockery in that title now—“just what do you want from me?”
Jagit dusted off his leather shirt. “Well, Wim—I was thinking if you was up to it, maybe you’d want to go on with our agreement.”
Wim raised his bandaged hand. “Wouldn’t be much pertection, one cripple.”
“But I don’t know the way down through that there Valley, which you do.”
Wim laughed incredulously. “I reckon you could fly over the moon on a broomstick and you wouldn’t need no map. And you sure as hell don’t need pertecting! Why’d you ever take us on, Mr. Jagged?” Grief sobered him suddenly, and realization—“You knew all along, didn’t you? What we were fixing to do. You took us along so’s you could watch us, and maybe scare us off. Well, you needn’t be watching me no more. I—we already changed our minds, even before what happened with them Borks. We was fixing to take you on down like we said, all honest.”
“I know that.” The peddler nodded. “You ever hear an old saying, Wim: ‘Two heads are better than one’? You can’t never tell; you might just come in handy.”
Wim shrugged ruefully, and wondered where the peddler ever heard that “old saying.” “Well…ain’t heard no better offers this morning.”
THEY LEFT THE GRANDFATHER trees and continued the descent toward the Great Valley. Throughout the early morning the pine woods continued to surround them, but as the morning wore on Wim noticed that the evergreens had given way to oak and sycamore, as the air lost its chill and much of its moistness. By late in the day he could catch glimpses between the trees of the green and amber vastness that was the valley floor, and pointed it out to the peddler. Jagit nodded, seeming pleased, and returned to the aimless humming that Wim suspected covered diabolical thoughts. He glanced again at the round, stubby merchant, the last man in the world a body’d suspect of magical powers. Which was perhaps what made them so convincing…“Mr. Jagged? How’d you do it? Hex them Borks, I mean.”
Jagit smiled and shook his head. “A good magician never tells how. What, maybe, but never how. You have to watch, and figure how for yourself. That’s how you get to be a good magician.”
Wim sighed, shifted his hand under his belt. “Reckon I don’t want to know, then.”
The peddler chuckled. “Fair enough.”
Surreptitiously, Wim watched his every move for the rest of the day.
After the evening meal the peddler again spent time at his wagon in the dark. Wim, sprawled exhausted by the campfire, saw the gleam of a warlock’s wand but this time made no move to investigate, only crossing his fingers as a precautionary gesture. Inactivity had left him with too much else to consider. He stared fixedly into the flames, his hand smarting.
“Reckon we should be down to the valley floor in about an hour’s travel, tomorrow. Then you say we head northwest, till we come to Fyffe?”
Wim started at the sound of the peddler’s voice. “Oh…yeah, I reckon. Cut north and any road’ll get you there; they all go to Fyffe.”
“‘All roads lead to Fyffe’?” The peddler laughed unexpectedly, squatted by the fire.
Wim wondered what was funny. “Anybody can tell you the way from here, Mr. Jagged. I think come morning I’ll be heading back; I…we never figured to come this far. Us hill folk don’t much like going down into the Flatlands.”
“Hm. I’m sorry to hear that, Wim.” Jagit pushed another branch into the fire. “But somehow I’d figured it you’d really been to Fyffe?”
“Well, yeah. I was…almost.” He looked up, surprised. “Three, four years ago, when I was hardly more’n a young’un, with my pa and some other men. See, my granther was the smith at Darkwood Corners, and he got hold of a gun—” And he found himself telling a peddler-man things everyone knew, and things he’d never told to anyone: How his grandfather had discovered gunpowder, how the Highlanders had plotted to overthrow the lords at Fyffe and take the rich valley farmlands for themselves. And how horsemen had come out from the city to meet them, with guns and magic, how the amber fields were torn and reddened and his pa had died when his homemade gun blew up in his face. How a bloody, tight-lipped boy returning alone to Darkwood Corners had filled its citizens with the fear of the Lord, and of the lords of Fyffe…He sat twisting painfully at a golden earring. “And—I heard tell as how they got dark magics down there that we never even saw, so’s to keep all the Flatlanders under a spell…Maybe you oughta think again ’bout going down there too, Mr. Jagged.”
“I thank you for the warning, Wim.” Jagit nodded. “But I’ll tell you—I’m a merchant by trade, and by inclination. If I can’t sell my wares, I got no point in being, and I can’t sell my wares in these hills.”
“You ain’t afraid they’ll try to stop you?”
He smiled. “Well, now, I didn’t say that. Their magic ain’t up to Sharn, I’m pretty sure. But it is an unknown…Who knows—they may turn out to be my best customers; lords are like to be free with their money.” He looked at Wim with something like respect. “But like I say, two heads are better than one. I’m right sorry you won’t be along. Mayhap in the morning we can settle accounts—”
In the morning the peddler hitched up his wagon and started down toward the Great Valley. And not really understanding why, Wim Buckry went with him.
EARLY IN THE DAY they left the welcome shelter of the last oak forest, started across the open rolling hills of ripening wild grasses, until they struck a rutted track heading north. Wim stripped off his jerkin and loosened his shirt, his pale Highland skin turning red under the climbing sun of the Valley. The dark-skinned peddler in his leather shirt smiled at him, and Wim figured, annoyed, that he must enjoy the heat.
By noon they reached the endless green corduroy fringe of the cultivated Flatlands, and with a jolt they found themselves on paved road. Jagit knelt and prodded the resilient surface before they continued on their way. Wim vaguely remembered the soft pavement, a bizarre luxury to Highland feet, stretching all the way to Fyffe; this time he noticed that in places the pavement was eaten away by time, and neatly patched with smooth-cut stone.
The peddler spoke little to him, only humming, apparently intent on searching out signs of Flatlander magic. A good magician watches…Wim forced himself to study the half-remembered landscape. The ripening fields and pasturelands blanketed the Valley to the limit of his sight, like an immense, living crazy-quilt in greens and gold, spread over the rich dark earth. In the distance he could see pale mist hovering over the fields, wondered if it was a trick of witchery or only the heat of the day. And he saw the Flatlanders at work in the fields by the road, well-fed and roughly dressed; tanned, placid faces that regarded their passage with the resigned disinterest that he would have expected of a plow-mule. Wim frowned.
“A rather curious lack of curiosity, I’d say, wouldn’t you?” The peddler glanced at him. “They’re going to make bad customers.”
“Look at ’em!” Wim burst out angrily. “How could they do all of this? They ain’t no better farmers ’n Highlanders; in the hills you work your hands to the bone to farm, and you get nothing, stones—And look at them, they’re fat. How, Mr. Jagged?”
“How do you think they do it, Wim?”
“I—” He stopped. Good magicians figure it out…“Well—they got better land.”
“True.”
“And…there’s magic.”
“Is there now?”
“You saw it—them smooth-bedded streams, this here road; it ain’t natural. But…they all look as how they’re bewitched, themselves, just like I heard. Mayhap it’s only the lords of Fyffe as have all the magic—it’s them we got to watch for?” He crossed his fingers.
“Maybe so. It looks like they may be the only customers I’ll have, too, if this doesn’t change.” The peddler’s face was devoid of expression. “Quit crossing your fingers, Wim; the only thing that’ll ever save you from is the respect of educated men.”
Wim uncrossed his fingers. He walked on for several minutes before he realized the peddler spoke like a Flatlander now, as perfectly as he’d spoken the Highland talk before.
Late in the afternoon they came to a well, at one of the farm villages that centered like a hub in a great wheel of fields. The peddler dipped a cup into the dripping container, and then Wim took a gulp straight from the bucket. A taste of bitter metal filled his mouth, and he spat in dismay, looking back at the merchant. Jagit was passing his hand over—no, dropping something into the cup—and as Wim watched the water began to foam, and suddenly turned bright red. The peddler’s black brows rose with interest, and he poured the water slowly out onto the ground. Wim blanched and wiped his mouth hard on his sleeve. “It tastes like poison!”
Jagit shook his head. “That’s not poison you taste; I’d say farming’s just polluted the water table some. But it is drugged.” He watched the villagers standing with desultory murmurs around his wagon.
“Sheep.” Wim’s face twisted with disgust.
The peddler shrugged. “But all of them healthy, wealthy, and wise…well, healthy and wise, anyway…healthy—?” He moved away to offer his wares. There were few takers. As Wim returned to the wagon, taking a drink of stale mountainwater from the barrel on the back, he heard the little man muttering again, like an incantation, “Fyffe…Fyffe…Dyston-Fyffe, they call it here…District Town Five?…Couldn’t be.” He frowned, oblivious. “But then again, why couldn’t it—?”
For the rest of that day the peddler kept his thoughts to himself, looking strangely grim, only pronouncing an occasional curse in some incomprehensible language. And that night, as they camped, as Wim’s weary mind unwillingly relived the loss of the only friends he had, he wondered if the dark silent stranger across the fire shared his loneliness; a peddler was always a stranger, even if he was a magician. “Mr. Jagged, you ever feel like going home?”
“Home?” Jagit glanced up. “Sometimes. Tonight, maybe. But I’ve come so far, I guess that would be impossible. When I got back, it’d all be gone.” Suddenly through the flames his face looked very old. “What made it home was gone before I left…But maybe I’ll find it again, somewhere else, as I go.”
“Yeah…” Wim nodded, understanding both more and less than he realized. He curled down into his blanket, oddly comforted, and went soundly to sleep.
MINOR WONDERS CONTINUED to assail him on their journey, and also the question, “Why?”; until gradually Jagit’s prodding transformed his superstitious awe into a cocky curiosity that sometimes made the peddler frown, though he made no comment.
Until the third morning, when Wim finally declared, “Everything’s a trick, if’n you can see behind it, just like with them witches in the hills. Everything’s got a—reason. I think there ain’t no such thing as magic!”
Jagit fixed him with a long mild look, and the specter of the night in the Grandfather Grove seemed to flicker in the dark eyes. “You think not, eh?”
Wim looked down nervously.
“There’s magic, all right, Wim; all around you here. Only now you’re seeing it with a magician’s eyes. Because there’s a reason behind everything that happens; you may not know what it is, but it’s there. And knowing that doesn’t make the thing less magic, or strange, or terrible—it just makes it easier to deal with. That’s something to keep in mind, wherever you are…Also keep in mind that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
Wim nodded, chastened, felt his ears grow red as the peddler muttered, “So’s a little ignorance…”
The afternoon of the third day showed them Fyffe, still a vague blot wavering against the horizon. Wim looked back over endless green toward the mountains, but they were hidden from him now by the yellow Flatland haze. Peering ahead again toward the city, he was aware that the fear that had come with him into the Great Valley had grown less instead of greater as they followed the familiar-strange road to Fyffe. The dappled cart horse snorted loudly in the hot, dusty silence, and he realized it was the peddler with his wagon full of magics that gave him his newfound courage.
He smiled, flexing his burned hand. Jagit had never made any apology for what he’d done, but Wim was not such a hypocrite that he really expected one, under the circumstances. And the peddler had treated his wounds with potions, so that bruises began to fade and skin to heal almost while he watched. It was almost—
Wim’s thoughts were interrupted as he stumbled on a rough patch in the road. The city, much closer now, lay stolidly among the fields in the lengthening shadows of the hot afternoon. He wondered in which field his father—abruptly turned his thoughts ahead again, noticing that the city was without walls or other visible signs of defense. Why? Mayhap because they had nothing to fear—He felt his body tighten with old terrors. But Jagit’s former grim mood had seemingly dropped away as his goal drew near, as though he had reached some resolution. If the peddler was confident, then Wim would be, too. He looked on the city with magician’s eyes; and it struck him that a more outlandish challenge had most likely never visited the lords of Fyffe.
They entered Fyffe, and though the peddler seemed almost disappointed, Wim tried to conceal his gaping with little success. The heavy stone and timber buildings crowded the cobble-patched street, rising up two and three stories to cut off his view of the fields. The street’s edge was lined with shop fronts; windows of bull’s-eyed glass and peeling painted signs advertised their trade. The levels above the shops, he supposed, were where the people lived. The weathered stone of the curbs had been worn to hollows from the tread of countless feet, and the idea of so many people—5,000, the peddler had guessed—in so little area made him shudder.
They made their way past dully-dressed, well-fed townsfolk and farmers finis
hing the day’s commerce in the cooling afternoon. Wim caught snatches of sometimes heated bargaining, but he noticed that the town showed little more interest in the bizarre spectacle of himself and the peddler than had the folk they dealt with on their journey. Children at least ought to follow the bright wagon—he was vaguely disturbed to realize he’d scarcely seen any, here or anywhere, and those he saw were kept close by parents. It seemed the peddler’s business would be no better here than in the hills after all. Like hogs in a pen…He glanced down the street, back over his shoulder. “Where’s all the hogs?”
“What?” The peddler looked at him.
“It’s clean. All them folk living here and there ain’t any garbage. How can that be, less’n they keep hogs to eat it? But I don’t see any hogs. Nor—hardly any young’uns.”
“Hmm.” The peddler shrugged, smiling. “Good questions. Maybe we should ask the lords of Fyffe.”
Wim shook his head. Yet he had to admit that the city so far, for all its strangeness, had shown him no signs of any magic more powerful or grim than that he’d seen in the fields. Perhaps the lords of Fyffe weren’t so fearsome as the tales claimed; their warriors weren’t bewitched, but only better armed.
The street curved sharply, and ahead the clustered buildings gave way on an open square, filled with the covered stalls of a public marketplace. And beyond it—Wim stopped, staring. Beyond it, he knew, stood the dwelling of the lords of Fyffe. Twice as massive as any building he had seen, its pilastered green-black walls reflected the square like a dark, malevolent mirror. The building had the solidity of a thing that had grown from the earth, a permanence that made the town itself seem ephemeral. Now, he knew, he looked on the house for magic that might match the peddler and Sharn.
Beside him, Jagit’s smile was genuine and unreadable. “Pardon me, ma’am,” the peddler stopped a passing woman and child, “but we’re strangers. What’s that building there called?”
“Why, that’s Government House.” The woman looked only mildly surprised. Wim admired her stocking-covered ankles.