by K. J. Parker
‘This Principle,’ said the Patriarch gravely, ‘which of course we do not name, provides the power that makes these things possible. Never forget how limited it is, or how little it can actually do.’
He paused and looked round the hall at the packed benches. Five hundred eager young students, every one of whom had no doubt sworn a childhood oath to be a magician when he grew up. Alexius was a cynical man by nature, and achieving the Patriarchate had ground away what little idealism he had left, but even he admitted that he had one serious – even sacred – responsibility to each year’s intake of novices. He must make them understand, as soon as possible, that they were not going to be taught how to be wizards.
‘Fundamentally,’ he continued, ‘the Principle can be used as a shield; and, to a much lesser extent, as a sword. That is all; defence and offence. Its virtues cannot heal the sick or raise the dead, change lead into gold, make a man invisible or attractive to women. It cannot make anything, or change anything already made. It can deflect curses, and it can curse; and even these things are largely incidental to the true purpose for which the Principle exists. The power is a by-product, as leather, bonemeal and glue are by-products of pig-breeding.’
As he’d intended, the homely image caused a mild ripple of disgust among the members of his high-minded young audience. This wasn’t the way they expected the Patriarch to talk. They had come here to be let in on a magnificent secret, the best and most profitable guild mystery of them all. With any luck, there would be twenty or so fewer ardent young faces gazing up at him by this time tomorrow, as the younger sons who wanted to learn how to turn their brothers into frogs, and the merchants’ sons who’d been sent to learn how to raise favourable winds and summon genies for the purpose of bulk-freight carriage, packed their bags and went home again. If he did his job properly, he’d be rid of half of these young fools before the term ended.
‘Tomorrow,’ he said, ‘I will explain to you the four great assumptions on which the Principle is founded. Once you have grasped these – if you manage to grasp them, which is by no means guaranteed – you will be in a position to decide which of the six aspects of the Principle to study, and we will then be able to allocate you to appropriate classes and tutors. May I also remind those of you who still have fees to pay that you cannot be allocated until all sums due have been received. You are dismissed.’
So much for the education of the young. Back in his own cell, a square stone box with a plank bed, a massive oak book box and the most dazzling mosaic ceiling in the city, he shrugged off his robes of office and his ridiculous purple boots, sat on the edge of the bed and patiently struggled with flint and tinder until his lamp reluctantly gave him some light.
Directly below his cell they were setting up the evening meal in the refectory. Fairly soon, the hall steward would knock on his door, asking permission to untie the knot that anchored the great chandelier that hung over the high table, so that it could be lowered and filled with the evening’s candles. The Patriarch couldn’t help resenting the intrusion, even though it was part of the daily ritual; the noise of the evening meal disturbed his reading, and scarcely a day passed when he didn’t stub his toe on the damned anchor-post as he pottered about in the gloom of his cell.
He had insisted on a room with no windows; lamplight, reflected in the thousands of gilded tesserae that made up the legendary mosaics, was good enough for a man to read by, provided that he leant close to the flame and held the page a few inches from his nose. Alexius knew that he was fatally prone to distraction. If he had a window, he’d look out of it instead of reading his book. If there were tapestry hangings or frescos, he’d sit gazing at them instead of applying his mind to the dense arguments of the Fathers. And if he went down to dinner in the refectory, instead of making do with a loaf of coarse bread, a jug of water and an apple, he’d do no further work that day, or the morning of the next.
In consequence, he was held to be a great ascetic and given honour accordingly. He was – a good joke, this – probably the most deeply respected Patriarch the city had known in a hundred years. Not bad for a man who moved his lips when he read, and made no effort to conceal the fact. And if it took him twice as long as his colleagues to master each new development and hypothesis in the orthodoxy, at least he did master them. Lazier, more gifted men who didn’t bother to read the actual text, relying instead on someone else’s summary, made mistakes and could be confounded by a painfully learnt quotation.
Some of them even liked him. He had no idea why.
The source of tribulation he had set himself to read this evening was a new discourse on the nature of belief; a short monograph apparently flung together in an idle moment by the young Archimandrite of one of the city colleges, a man who had more intuitive understanding of the Principle in his toenail clippings than the Patriarch had in his whole body, but who devoted most of his waking hours and a considerable proportion of the income of his House to the trotting races. In his treatise, the dashing young sportsman proposed that belief acted as a focus for the Principle in the way that a prism of crystal or glass can concentrate the light of the sun. The Principle, he argued, was as universal as light and as diffuse. Only when filtered through the willing mind could it become strong enough to illuminate subterranean darkness or burn a hole.
The Patriarch scowled. It was a succinct and accurate way of saying what he’d always felt about the Principle but had never been able to clarify properly in his own mind; clearly the boy had an exceptional gift, and this was only the first chapter of the text, the part usually reserved for stating the blindingly obvious premises of one’s argument. The startlingly new hypothesis that had been recommended to his attention lay in the seventy-eight chapters that followed. It was going to be a long night.
He was just starting to develop a headache (it didn’t help that his copy was vilely written on thrice-used parchment) when he heard the knock at the door he’d been expecting this past half-hour. He grunted, and a blade of light appeared in the doorway.
‘Sorry to trouble you, Father.’
He grunted again, trying not to look up from the book. For some reason it wasn’t the hall steward tonight; he hadn’t recognised the voice, but it was young and female, one of the housekeeper’s girls presumably, and if he was to stand any chance of wrapping his slow brains around this confounded hypothesis-
‘Sorry to trouble you,’ the voice repeated. ‘But if you could spare me a few minutes-’
Damnation, it was a student. ‘I’m reading,’ he growled, bringing the page up against his nose. ‘Go away.’
‘It won’t take long, I promise. Please.’
Alexius sighed. ‘Patriarch Nicephorus the Fifth,’ he said severely, ‘on being interrupted while reading the scripture All Things Shall Cease, let fly such a curse that the unfortunate fool who had disturbed him was at once struck by lightning. Only with great difficulty was the victim later identified as Nicephorus’ own daughter, who had come to warn her father that the house was on fire. I suggest you see me after the lecture tomorrow.’
It is well to avoid distractions; but if distractions refuse to be avoided, far quicker to let them have their way. He picked a rush off the floor and laid it in the book to mark his place, then looked up.
Maybe this wasn’t going to be such a serious distraction after all. She was long and bony, with a thin face and pale blue eyes; fifteen, maybe sixteen years old, wearing her body like an elder sister’s coat she’d be sure to grow into eventually. It’s always the scrawny ones who get pushed off into a trade. He had been just as stringy himself at that age. He relented a little.
‘Hurry it up, then,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you?’
The girl knelt on the ground; not obeisance, just the instinctive habit of someone who came from a house where they had no chairs. ‘I’d like a curse, please.’
Alexius closed his eyes. It was starting early this year. He was about to say someting fierce and dismissive, but somehow didn’t. There
was something appealingly – what was it? – businesslike about the child that almost tempted him to do what she asked.
‘What for?’ he asked.
This seemed to strike her as a silly question. ‘I want to curse someone,’ she said. ‘Could you teach me the right words, please?’
I could explain, Alexius thought. I could start with the four assumptions, work on through the theoretical basis of the Principle, briefly summarise the role of belief (which might be said to resemble a glass used to concentrate the rays of the sun…), explain the reciprocal effect of action and reaction and the futility of unfounded use of the powers, and so make her understand exactly how silly her request has been. Or I could just say no.
‘That depends on who you want to curse and why,’ he replied instead. ‘You see, if a curse is going to do any good – sorry, I didn’t mean it that way – if it’s going to work, it has to have a firm foundation in something the victim’s done. The old saying No one can curse an innocent man, though not strictly speaking true, isn’t so far from the mark-’
‘Oh, he’s not innocent,’ the girl interrupted confidently. ‘He killed my uncle.’
Alexius nodded. ‘That’s a good start,’ he said. ‘At least we’ve got an action on which a curse can be founded. Better if the killing wasn’t justified, but even a man who is in the right can be successfully cursed so long as the act itself is violent or causes damage. Hence my caveat to the maxim I quoted just now about cursing an innocent man.’
The girl thought for a moment. ‘It was legal,’ she said. ‘But not justified. How can you justify killing someone? You can’t, that’s all.’
The Patriarch decided not to pursue that one. ‘When you say legal-’ he began.
‘My uncle’s an advocate. Was.’ The girl smiled. ‘Not a very good one. He never killed anybody in his life. All wills and divorces, you see.’
Alexius suppressed a smile, thinking of the famous statue in the suburb where he’d been born-
DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF
NICETAS THE BOXER
OF WHOM IT MAY TRULY BE SAID
HE NEVER HARMED ANY MAN.
‘Perhaps he was in the wrong line of work,’ he said. ‘Presumably it was another advocate-’
‘His name’s Bardas Loredan,’ the girl said promptly. ‘I think he’s quite famous. Can you tell me the words now, please?’
Alexius sighed. ‘It really isn’t as simple as that,’ he said. ‘For a start, there aren’t any special words; in fact, you can curse someone perfectly well without saying anything. What you really need is a picture-’
‘I’ve got one,’ said the girl, reaching into her sleeve.
‘In your mind,’ Alexius continued. ‘A strong mental image of the act that makes you want to lay the curse.’ He gritted his teeth; better in the long run to explain it now, it’d be bound to save time. ‘The way it works is that a qualifying act – something violent or hurtful – causes a disturbance in the forces we refer to as the Principle.’ That, he knew, was putting it very badly, but he couldn’t be bothered. The girl seemed to understand. ‘It’s like when you drop a stone into water. For a split second, the water is pushed away and there’s a sort of gap where the water used to be. Then the water comes back into it, but the ripples carry on spreading. What we can do – sometimes – is catch hold of that gap and put into it something of our own. That’s what we call a curse.’
‘I think I see,’ the girl said. ‘So what happens to the water? The water that should have gone back into the gap, I mean?’
Alexius smiled, impressed. ‘That’s a good question,’ he said. ‘By interfering where there’s already been an interference, you see, we always make things worse – no, that’s a bad way of putting it. We increase the level of the disturbance, and inevitably there’s a reaction. More to the point, the reaction tends to be much more intensive than the curse itself.’
‘It hits you harder than you hit the victim?’
Alexius nodded gratefully. ‘You’ve got it,’ he said. ‘Which is why, before you learn cursing, you have to learn how to deflect curses. Otherwise you might succeed in making your enemy break a leg, but you’ll break your own neck.’
The girl shrugged. ‘I’m not bothered about that,’ she said. ‘Will you tell me how to go about it?’
Alexius drummed his fingers on his knee. One thing the adepts of the Principle did not do was to hire themselves out as metaphysical assassins, cursing perfect strangers to order. Quite apart from the social implications, there was the danger. The reaction to a curse in your own mind’s eye was bad enough; warding off the reaction when you were inside somebody else’s head was next to impossible unless you knew exactly what you were doing. And the Patriarch was perfectly willing to admit that he wasn’t sure about that.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s out of the question. All I could do is try and lay the curse for you, but-’
‘Would you?’
The carefully phrased explanation he’d prepared faded away inside his mind. ‘It’s very difficult,’ he said. ‘And it probably wouldn’t work. You see, I’d have to try and look at what’s inside your mind.’
‘Can you do that?’
The Patriarch tugged at his beard. It would be easy to say no, it’s impossible; because it was, or at least it was a simple matter to prove it wasn’t possible. In three weeks’ time, he’d do just that in the lecture hall. One thing you had to learn, however – the so-called fourth assumption – was that just because a thing’s impossible doesn’t mean to say you can’t do it if you really try. But to try, you have to want to.
‘Sort of,’ he replied.
‘How does that work?’
Alexius grinned rather feebly. ‘I’m not sure that it does,’ he replied. ‘It happens sometimes, but that’s not quite the same as something working. A clock works if you wind it. Sometimes a clock that’s wound down happens to tell the right time.’
The girl looked at him. ‘What’s a clock?’ she asked.
Alexius made a vague gesture. ‘I’ll try if you like,’ he said. ‘But I’m not promising anything.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome. Now then, I’ve got to try and visualise exactly what happened; I’ve got to see that stone hitting the water. And not just any stone; that particular one and no other. Do you understand?’
‘I think so.’ The girl pressed her chin with her hands, her brow furrowed. ‘You want me to tell you what happened.’
The Patriarch shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I want you to tell me what you remember, there’s a difference. When you think of it, or when something reminds you, isn’t there a picture that immediately comes into your mind?’
‘Yes. Like a single moment, frozen.’
‘Very good.’ Alexius took a deep breath. ‘Tell me what you can see.’
The girl looked up at him. ‘Uncle was trying to hit him – sort of cutting rather than thrusting. He pushed Uncle’s sword away and stabbed him, and then his sword broke. I can see the broken-off bit in Uncle’s chest. It looks so strange, a big bit of metal like that stuck in a person. Reminds me of a pin cushion, or the knife standing in the butter.’
Alexius nodded. ‘And what about the look on his face? Your uncle’s, I mean. Can you see that?’
‘Oh, yes.’ The girl looked down at her folded hands. ‘He was cross.’
‘Cross?’ Alexius repeated.
‘That’s right. It’s like when you do something clumsy, dropping a cup or tearing your sleeve on a nail. He was cross because he’d got his fencing wrong. He was very proud of his fencing. He knew he wasn’t that good, but he practised for hours. He used to hang a sack full of straw from the apple tree and bash at it with a stick; and he knew the names of all the different strokes, and he’d call them out as he did them. When he made a mistake, he was cross. I think that was all he had time for.’
‘I see,’ Alexius said, and then added irrelevantly, ‘You must have been very fond of him.’
> The girl nodded. ‘He was eight years older than me. They say twenty-three’s a good age for a bad fencer.’
Well, now, the Patriarch thought. Twenty-three. In the western suburbs, it’s quite usual for uncles to marry their nieces. Helpful; nothing like love to help you get a grip on a fleeting image. He closed his eyes-
‘Are you doing it now?’
‘Yes. Don’t interrupt.’
‘But I haven’t told you what I want the curse to be yet.’
Alexius’ breath came out in an exasperated gasp. It wasn’t enough that he was expected to do a curse once-removed; it had to be a specific curse. This was turning out to be quite a performance.
‘Well?’
‘I can see him,’ the girl said. ‘He’s in the court, and I’m facing him. We’ve both got swords, and he stabs at me. And then-’
Alexius waved his hands in alarm. ‘Stop,’ he said, ‘or you’ll do it yourself, and then the reaction’ll bring the roof down on both of us. Trust me; I think I know what you’ve got in mind.’
He closed his eyes again; and there, as if painted on the inside of his eyelids, was the court, with its high domed roof, the rows of stone benches encircling the sandy floor, the judge’s platform, the marble boxes where the advocates waited for the command. He could see Loredan’s back, and over his shoulder the girl; older now, grown up, extraordinarily beautiful in a way that made him uneasy. He could see the red and blue light from the great rose window burning on the blade of her sword, a long, thin strip of straight steel foreshortened by the perspective into an extension of her hand, a single pointing finger. He saw Loredan move forward, his graceful, economical movement; and the girl reacts, parrying backhand, high. Now she leans forward, scarcely moving her arm at all except for the roll of the wrist that brings the blade level again. Loredan’s shoulder drops as he tries to get his sword in the way, but he’s left it too late, the sin of the overconfident man. Because Loredan’s back is to him, Alexius can’t see the impact or where the blade hits; but the sword falls from his hand, he staggers back and drops, bent at the waist, dead before his head bumps noisily on the flagstones. The girl doesn’t move, the blade points directly at him. He realises he never saw the man’s face, or asked the girl her name…