A Handful of Men: The Complete Series

by Dave Duncan

  She came out carrying a bowl of offal and took it across to tip in the midden pit. Chickens rushed over to investigate the treat; they began games of grab and chase. As she came back, Frial stopped suddenly and stared off to where the path wound away into the trees. A shadow seemed to fall over her, although the rest of the clearing was filled with sunshine.

  Gaib said nothing, for he was a slow-spoken man, but he ceased his work on the hide and watched. She was still a fine woman in his eyes, although younger men might have remarked on her thickening body and the streaks of gray in the nut-brown hair tied tight about her head. Her woolen robe she had woven herself, the wool having come in trade from a neighbor in return for coffee. It was a dusty brown shade, coffee colored.

  Her chin was not as pointed as it once had been, or her neck as slender. The face that had once glowed with the innocence of spring dew had creased into lines of sadness as she aged, but that was the price of having Feeling—to sense the darknesses that lurked within everyone she met, as well as the joys and loves. Despite that burden, she was a happy-spoken person and still eager on the ferns beside the boulder.

  She came hurrying back to the door. “I think I shall go to the Feen Place,” she said a little breathlessly. “Take them a hock and perhaps some ribs.”

  Her eyes said more, then she glanced again at the path.

  “You will not make it back by dark,” Gaib said softly.

  “You remember to coop the chickens, then!” She vanished into the cottage.

  Gaib frowned and continued his work on the hide. In a remarkably few moments, Frial came bustling out with her warm cloak on, and shoes, and a bonnet still untied. She had a basket on her arm. She bent to kiss his forehead and he reached up and touched her with the back of his wrist, which was clean. She scurried across to the trees and disappeared. She would double around to the path when she Felt it was safe.

  Trouble coming. He rose and tossed the hide up on the roof for safety. Then he went to the spring to wash the blood off his hands—noticing, as he so often did, that the water seemed warmer in winter than it did in summer. He liked to think that was a secret sign of approval from the Gods, a private little blessing on the Place.

  He strolled back to the door and seated himself on the bench to await the unwanted visitor’s arrival. Meanwhile, he could listen to the whisper of the leaves and the remarks of birds passing through, hunting nesting sites.

  He did not know who the visitor would be. Frial would not, either, but clearly she had Felt unwelcome emotion on its way and they could both make guesses. There was an elderly widower who had lascivious ideas about Thaïle; there were a couple of grouchy old women. None of those normally inspired Frial to quit the Place and none would likely come calling at this hour on a winter’s day at the dark of the moon.

  Gaib never considered the possibility of violence or danger. He owned nothing worth stealing except perhaps food, all of which he would willingly share with a stranger. Any pixie would know that and none would outstay a welcome.

  The visitor came into sight on the path—a man, tall and slim, striding with an easy, youthful gait. His jerkin and pants were green, as was his broad-brimmed hat; his cloak was brown with fur trim. He bore a recorder’s satchel slung on his shoulder. That was what Frial had feared, of course.

  He stopped and looked around the Place before addressing the owner. “Goodman Gaib?”

  Gaib bowed awkwardly. He had spoken with recorders maybe five times in his life and felt ill at ease with them. “I am Gaib and welcome you to the Gaib Place.”

  “I am Jain of the College.”

  Gaib tendered the bench, or food, or refreshment. The newcomer accepted only the bench and a dipper of water. He praised the Place, as was to be expected, but briefly. He chose the far end of the bench, where he would not bloody his boots with the results of the pigskin scraping; he removed his hat and laid it beside him, revealing curly brown hair and ears as pointed as Gaib’s own.

  “Please sit, Goodman Gaib. You will forgive me if I go at once to our business? You will forgive me also if I mention that your Place is far from my planned path. I envy you the solitude, of course, but I hope to return to the Grike Place by sundown.”

  That was a long way, Gaib rejoined politely, repeating his offer of hospitality for the night. He salted his words with a hint of reproof at the unseemly impatience of youth.

  “I hope that will not be necessary.” Jain’s eyes were less slanted than most people’s, amber colored and very bright. He smiled at his host for a moment, then tugged the satchel around to his lap and unlaced the cover.

  Gaib knew that recorders were supposed to have strange powers, but he was not a worrying man. He waited placidly. Jain produced papers and perused them. Reading, that was called.

  “I do not wish to disrupt your family life any more than needs must, but it would speed our talk if Goodwife Frial and the child Thaïle could join us.” Again the bright amber-inspection…

  “My goodwife has gone to visit our son and his family.”

  “Ah? She left long ago?”

  He was pushing a little too hard, even for a recorder. Gaib considered the question for a while.

  “Some time ago. I don’t know if she’ll be back before tomorrow.”

  Jain nodded thoughtfully, pursing his lips tight enough to make grooves in the youthful smoothness of his face. “And the child?”

  “She shouts when we call her a child. Loudly.”

  “Come, now! I am sure you bring up your children to be more respectful of their elders than that.” The recorder took another look at his bundle of papers. They were shabby and well worn. “Not much over fifteen. Well, I shall be considerate of her feelings when we speak.”

  “She went wandering off around lunchtime,” Gaib said truthfully. Thaïle might well have left for the same reason as her mother had; her Feeling had a much greater range. “She did not say where she was going. It is possible that she, also, has gone to visit someone.”

  That last remark was so unlikely that it could be classed as a lie, and lying to recorders was unwise. The visitor was obviously trying to overawe him with his education and his wisdom. Gaib was very glad that the women had left. This was man’s business.

  “You know what children are,” he added. “Always rushing off to call on one another.”

  “A moment ago you told me she was not a child any longer.”

  “I said she did not think she was, sir. Not that I did not think so.”

  Oh, this smart-aleck youngster thought he was very grand, with his important satchel and his College ways. Maybe he did know a lot of things and maybe he even had occult powers, but had he ever skinned a pig, or delivered piglets, or laid out coffee to dry in the sun? Had he ever built a home or raised children? Ever buried a baby? What was he compared to a real man, a loving father, a provider? Had he ever planted a crop of anything?

  Gaib could tell if a melon was ripe without cutting it open, and he had never met anyone else who could do that.

  The recorder sighed, staring across the clearing to where a rooster had just emerged from the undergrowth near the midden pit. It looked up from its foraging and began strutting purposefully toward him. When it drew near, he held out a hand at knee level. The bird hopped up on his wrist and cocked its head to study him with an eye as bright and yellow as his own. He stroked the shiny mahogany feathers of its breast. Then it jumped off and streaked away in alarm, wings spread and head out in front, appalled at what it had just done.

  Jain turned his gaze back on Gaib.

  The afternoon seemed much colder than it had before that demonstration. Gaib could not recall having felt so uncomfortable in many years. Perhaps never.

  “Where is she?” the visitor asked.

  “Up the hill, I expect.”

  Jain frowned and raised his eyes to the encircling banks. Gaib thought of the rooster, his heart beating fast.

  “A long way!” the recorder muttered. “A very long way!”


  He stuffed the papers back in the satchel.

  “A year ago she kept Death Watch for a woman named Phain.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Her grandmother.”

  “Great-grandmother.”

  “Of course, forgive me.” The recorder looked annoyed at his slip. “It is unusual to assign a relative for a Death Watch. A Watch is hard enough on a child without that.”

  “She and her mother just happened to be visiting relatives nearby.” Gaib tried to make the matter seem unimportant. “When the old crone began to fail, there was the usual hunt for a suitable Watcher and she was the only one close. There are few Gifted families in the district. None of them had a child of the right age, except one boy, and he had already gained a word.”

  Jain smiled. The smile was curiously sinister. “She just happened to be visiting? Whose idea was the visit?”

  “I… I do not recall. It was a year ago.”

  “You are quite sure you do not recall?”

  “Quite sure. Her mother’s, I expect.” In spite of the chill, Gaib was sweating. Why did such trouble have to enter his life now, at his age? What had he done wrong? He thanked the Gods every morning for Their blessings; he aided the old and the sick as he could. He wondered if Thaïle was Feeling his fear, in her secret place, far away up the hill. He wondered if Jain could Feel his very thoughts. Lying to recorders was unwise. Everybody knew that.

  “And what talent did she manifest when she had been told the old woman’s word of power?”

  “Nothing special, or we should have sent word to the College, of course. We would have sent word. I mean, if she had displayed any Faculty.”

  “We judge who has Faculty!”

  “But… Of course, sir.”

  “What talent?”

  “She seems to have her mother’s knack of Feeling. Not as strong, though!”

  “Ah? Not as strong?”

  “No. Not nearly as strong.”

  Jain shook his head in bored disbelief. He pulled out his papers again and rustled them, like a snake rustling on dry leaves. “Goodwife Frial has a borderline Faculty—her talent is well developed. You have traces. Seeing the fertility of your Place, even in winter, I wonder if your ability was underestimated. Green thumbs are hard to gauge. The word is weak.”

  “Weak? Word? I don’t understand.”

  The recorder closed his eyes as if repeating a lesson to a very dull child. “Almost everyone has some talent or other, some ability. A few have more than one. Tell such a person a word of power and that talent is raised to the level of genius.”

  “Only if he has Faculty,” Gaib said stubbornly.

  The amber eyes flicked open. “No. Not normally, Goodman Gaib. It is true in your experience, I admit, but only because the words you are aware of are all very weak. Each one is known to a great many people and thus its power is very diluted. Spread thin, you see. Surely you were taught this?”

  “I must have forgotten.”

  “Mmm? Just a stupid peasant? I think you underestimate me, and that is truly stupid. But it is true that these words rarely produce much effect. We call them ‘background’ words and we keep track of them very carefully. Because they are weak, when they do augment a talent, then we can assume that the person involved has Faculty, a Gift for magic itself. Otherwise, the effect is negligible, I agree. It is curious that your daughter just happened to be in the area when the woman Phain was about to die.”

  It had not merely been curious, Gaib thought, it had been disastrous.

  The recorder stuffed the papers back in the satchel and began lacing it up. With relief, Gaib decided the man was leaving. The next remark stopped his heart.

  “At the Vool Place, I was told that your daughter Felt a battle in progress Outside, beyond the mountains.”

  “That was right after the old woman died, my daughter had never seen death before, she had just discovered a talent she did not know about, she was hysterical, she was imagining…” He was babbling like a child.

  “There was a battle.”

  The Good preserve us!

  The recorder had known everything, all along.

  Jain stretched his legs, folded his arms, leaned back against the wall of the cottage, relaxed—and smiled thinly. “The Keeper knew of the battle, of course. And your daughter did. Only those two, in all Thume. And you tell me that her Feeling is weaker than her mother’s?”

  Gaib said nothing, watching his hands rub together, hearing his skin making raspy noises.

  “I trust that you are loyal to the Keeper, Goodman Gaib?”

  “Of course,” Gaib said hoarsely.

  “Perhaps you have forgotten your catechism? Let us see if you can remember it. Stand up. No, hands behind you. Head up, back straight. That’s better. Now, Goodman Gaib. What lies Outside?”

  “Death and torture and slavery.”

  “Who waits Outside?”

  Gaib was a child again, standing before his father. “The red-haired demons, the white-haired demons, the gold-haired demons, the blue-haired demons, and the brown-haired —“

  “Wrong!”

  “The dark-haired demons.”

  “Right. How do the demons come?”

  “Over the mountains and over the sea.”

  “Who defends us from them?”

  “The Keeper and the College.”

  “Whom do we serve?”

  “The Keeper and the College.”

  “Who never sleeps?”

  “The Keeper.”

  The recorder gathered his long legs and rose, clutching his satchel. He donned his hat. After a minute Gaib raised his eyes and met that bright gaze. He felt very small and stupid. And frightened.

  “I shall go and talk with your daughter now. I judge that she has Faculty. You will send her to the College before her sixteenth birthday. This is your duty to the Keeper and the College.”

  God of Pity! Gaib mumbled something.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And how do you keep her until then?”

  “Away from death.”

  “Correct. Look at your left hand.”

  Gaib obeyed. His hand was shaking as he had never seen it shake before, but that was not what mattered. Although he had felt nothing, the third and fourth fingers were now grown together. He cried out and tried to separate them. Then he tried with his other hand, but they had become one broad finger with two nails.

  “You must blame your own stupidity,” Jain said in a sad, weary voice. “I don’t enjoy mutilating people, but you need a reminder of where your loyalty lies. Forget it in future and you will have to suffer much worse.”

  He brushed past Gaib as if he were a bush and strode across the clearing, heading away from the path, toward the hill. In a moment he had vanished amid the trees on the slope.

  Gaib ran into the cottage and found his metal knife, the one he killed pigs with. He tried to push the point between the two halves of that hideous finger, but he found bone there. By the time he had made sure it was bone all the way across, the grotesque double finger was hurting and bleeding a lot. He wrapped a scrap of cloth around it.

  He went through to his Place beside the boulder and threw himself down on the heaped fern fronds. He pulled the blanket up, covering even his face, and just lay there, curled small and shivering. He wished Frial were beside him, holding him.

  2

  It went without saying that all pixie children had secret places of their own. Thaïle had shared a family secret place with Feen and Sheel, which they had shown her as soon as she was old enough to keep the secret, and another they took their friends to when they came to visit. She also had one of her own. She even knew now where Sheel’s secret place had been, now that her sister had departed, and it was not nearly as good as her own. She had never discovered Feen’s place, but boys were supposed to be better at finding good places than girls were. So Feen had told her, anyway.

  As a small child she ha
d changed her secret place several times as she had ranged farther afield and grown more discriminating, but her final choice had lasted her for several years and she did not expect to change it before she went away to a real Place and a man. In fact, a year or so ago she’d thought her days of playing childish hiding games were over. Then she’d learned a word of power and nothing had been quite right after that.

  Hours ago she had Felt an unfamiliar mind coming closer to the Gaib Place. Contempt, she had Felt, and a sort of stern anger. Frightened, Thaïle had slipped away from the cottage and hurried to her secret place. She had been there a long time.

  Her place was halfway up a green cliff, in among the largest trees. You climbed a shabby old eucalyptus, crawled out on a wide branch, and scrambled across to the top of a big mossy rock. Then you squeezed between the two rocks it was leaning against and ducked under a massive dead trunk and you were there. The secret place itself was as large as one of the rooms in the cottage, a strangely angled grotto of flat, smooth rocks lined with moss and creepers. Most of it was open to the forest canopy, but there was a wide overhang to sit under when the rain came and a nook to store precious things in.

  There she kept a stuffed dragon her mother had made for her ages ago, which had been her special favorite companion when she was small, some extra-beautiful pebbles she had picked up from time to time, strings of melon seeds to wear as necklaces, a man’s elbow carved in stone, several bright snail shells and even brighter fragments of pottery, some bronze rings that must have been links in a soldier’s armor once and were all green now but probably quite valuable, a half-finished feather hat, and a couple of lopsided baskets she had made herself.

  Lately she had added a rolling pin and a well-polished bowl made from a gourd. Gaith had given her the bowl and Shoop the pin. She had given them her most gracious thanks in return. Gaith was bearable, so he’d also gotten a kiss, but Shoop hadn’t, because he wasn’t.

  In the very safest, darkest corner, carefully wrapped in banana leaves, she hoarded some scraps of leather, a right-hand glove and the beginnings of a left-hand glove; also a needle and some thongs. A year ago she’d been hoping she would find the courage to give the finished gloves to Phoon, who was as old as her brother; he had a wonderful laugh and bulgy muscles in his arms, but then Phoon had found a Place and offered it—and himself—to some girl he’d met on his explorations. She’d accepted both, so Thaïle’s gloves had never been finished. Another day, some other boy…