A Handful of Men: The Complete Series

by Dave Duncan

  He bent over to lean his elbows on the chair back; he regarded her warily. “So I’m told.”

  “How big is the College, Mist?”

  “You think it’s all over the place?”

  “I think it’s all over Thume — hill country for me, river bottom for you. Hot lands, cool lands… That’s why the weather changes along the Way.”

  “Evil take it!” He smiled sheepishly. “It took me a week to work that out! Something Maggot said about the seashore to the south tipped me off. I just thought you were gorgeous, I didn’t know you were clever, as well.”

  Compliments were nice, but an offer to wash up would have been nicer. Sensing trouble ahead, Thaïle decided it was time to move Novice Mist out into the cool night air.

  * * *

  Stars were appearing in the darkening sky, the waxing moon was bright enough to cast shadows. As they set off along the Way together, Mist reached for her hand and she moved it to safety.

  “It’s a beautiful evening,” he grumbled. “Romantic!”

  It was. He wasn’t.

  “But we have all our lives ahead of us here in the College,” she said. “Don’t we?”

  The implications silenced him. Mist, she suspected, did not think very far ahead. About twenty minutes would be his limit.

  The forest grew deeper, and dark, but the Way glimmered pale before them. Leaves whispered busily all around. Soon she smelled rain and heard a faint patter on the canopy high above. An owl hooted in the distance.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “The Commons. That’s where you eat if you don’t want to cook. Great food! I don’t mean better than yours, of course. After that, maybe the Library?”

  “Fine.” What was a library?

  A few minutes went by. Thaïle sniffed suspiciously. The air was warmer, muggier, bearing a strangely familiar scent. River? Yes, it might be a river. Not one of the mountain torrents she knew from her childhood, but one of the slow, sinuous floods of the lowlands, muddy and weedy. And that chirruping sound?

  “Is the Commons near a river, Mist?”

  “River? No. Why?”

  “Just wondered. What’s that noise?”

  “Frogs.”

  Of course frogs — she knew that now. Not a river, but a swamp, perhaps? Or a lake.

  She Felt no guile in her companion — he was genuinely puzzled by her questions, still foggy from the wine. But then he must have detected the change in the air, also, for his puzzlement rose to worry, and confusion.

  The trees thinned out to reveal a moonlit glade and wide water beyond. And a cottage, with a canoe inverted on trestles beside it. She winced at the explosion of embarrassment from Mist.

  “This is your Place!” she said wryly. “On a lake, you said, right?”

  “Thaïle! I’m sorry! I truly didn’t mean… I didn’t mean to bring you here. Not now. I was hoping maybe later. I don’t understand!”

  No one could lie to her, and he wasn’t trying. She laughed uneasily. “I think you weren’t thinking hard enough about where we were going, Mist. You took the wrong Way by accident!”

  “That must be it.” He was genuinely upset at seeming foolish and worried that she would think evil of him. All talk, Jain had called him.

  “Well, we’re here now. You want to show me?” The surest road to a pixie’s heart was to praise his Place, her mother had taught her. It was only good manners to ask to be shown around.

  Eagerly Mist led her over to the little house. He pushed open the door and called light from magic lanterns, then bowed in mock formality. “I am Mist and welcome you to the Mist Place.”

  Before she could invoke the Gods’ blessings in response, he rushed on: “It isn’t very tidy, I’m afraid.”

  As an understatement, that remark would be hard to equal. The floor was muddy and every scrap of furniture was cluttered with clothes. She saw dirty dishes, banana skins, orange peels, leftover scraps that would be certain to bring vermin — already a legion of bugs whirled around the lantern. An open door showed a rumpled, unmade bed. He had managed all this in only ten days?

  “It isn’t, is it?” she said sadly. It would be a pleasant cottage otherwise. She could hardly scold a man so much older and larger than herself — indeed, his woebegone expression made her more inclined to demand a broom and start a cleanup. She resisted that temptation, for she recognized his talent at work. She had guessed what the second recorder had recognized in Mist — an occult ability to make other people want to tend him. Cook his meals, for example, wash his dishes. For all his size and muscle, he just stood there looking likable and helpless as an oversize puppy.

  Then her eyes wandered to the cottage itself: walls of tight-woven basketwork, roof thatched with banana leaves, rafters of bamboo. A pulse in her throat began beating uncontrollably. A terrible sense of familiarity engulfed her. Somewhere she had known a house like this, impossibly like this. She backed away, taut with a growing horror, feeling unknown wraiths rise to gibber in the dark corners of her mind.

  Even the unperceptive Mist had registered her alarm. “What’s wrong?” he demanded.

  “Nothing. Just very tired… It’s lovely, I’ll see it better in daylight, excuse me.”

  She turned and fled out the door — ignoring his shouts, ignoring the rain, racing off across the clearing and along the Way, awkward in her unfamiliar shoes, with her cloak streaming behind her. As she rounded the second bend, his fear and distress cut off abruptly and she was alone again. A few more panting steps, and the warm mugginess of the lowland air faded also. Moonlight began to filter down through the trees. The spectral path glittered pale before her.

  Bamboo and wicker. Somewhere she had known a house like that. Somewhere, sometime, it must have mattered greatly to her.

  The Thaïle Place, she thought. She must concentrate on her destination. If she worried too much about Mist’s cottage, the Way might take her back there. The Thaïle Place, home… Except that the shiny dream cottage she had been given did not feel like home. Thaïle of the Thaïle Place — it sounded wrong!

  Thaïle of Who’s Place?

  She slowed to a walk, conscious of the painful pounding of her heart. She forced herself to breathe more slowly and unclench her fists. Fool! What was there to be afraid of? Jain had said she could be in no danger in the College. Forest never troubled her, even at night. Open grassland would be much more scary.

  Soon she smelled the air of the high country, the familiar tree scents. The moonlight grew brighter. She came around a bend and saw the Thaïle Place ahead… dark, deserted. Not home, true, but a familiar refuge. She stumbled up the porch steps and went in, closing the door on the terrors of the world.

  Life’s young day:

  I’ve wandered east, I’ve wandered west,

  Through mony a weary way;

  But never, never can forget

  The luve of life’s young day!

  William Motherwell, Jeanie Morrison

  SEVEN

  Come by moonlight

  1

  Thaïle was still tidying away the dirty dishes and the remains of supper when she Felt anxiety approaching. Mist’s distinctive emotions were familiar to her by now, and so was the sudden starting and ending of Feeling caused by the sorcery of the Way — had he been coming by any mundane road, she would have detected him hours ago. Peeking around a corner of a drape, she saw a lantern flicker in the trees.

  Then came hesitation. He had followed her to make sure she was all right, that she had reached home safely. Now he could see the light in her window. She did not want to talk with Mist any more that night; she needed time to think before she talked with anyone. She marched across the room, letting her shadow traverse the curtain. She Felt his relief… regret… resignation. A few minutes’ indecision, and then he turned for home. His emotions were abruptly cut off by the Way. When she looked again, his light had gone. Poor Mist! He meant well, even if a hailstorm was more considerate.

  * * *


  But the day would not end. She washed the dishes; she washed herself. She turned out the lights, shed the last other garments. She sank into that cloud-soft featherbed. And the day would not end.

  Yesterday? She had no yesterday. She had no memory of her journey, or her arrival at the College. She could remember going to the Wide Place, to visit Sheel. She could not recall returning home. Had she just run away? By herself? That seemed very unlikely.

  Almost a year had been stolen from her life — of that she was certain. She was plumper than she remembered herself, and fat took time. Hair took time, too — she climbed out of bed, turned on the light, and inspected her neck in the mirror again. Maybe… she could not be sure. Everyone tended to grow a little paler in the rainy season and darker in the dry season. The neck evidence, she admitted, was weak. It might be only imagination, or the rainy season. She could hardly accost Sorcerer Jain, point at her neck, and demand an explanation.

  She turned out the light and floated down into the bed again. It was much too soft, but she knew she would not sleep, even if she lay on the floor. She had never felt more awake in her life. Too soft… and empty.

  Why did an empty bed feel so wrong when she had always had a bed to herself? Ferns or feathers — a bed was a bed.

  She thought about praying, but almost all the prayers she had ever learned were addressed to the Keeper, and here she was in the Keeper’s lair. Even the Gods might not heed a prayer from within the College itself.

  Almost a year of her life. She might be able to live with that loss. Whom do we serve? asked the catechism. The Keeper and the College, of course. She had been taught those words by her parents, as all pixies always were and always had been. If she had truly run away, disobeying the recorder’s edict that she present herself at the College, then she had sinned. Crime deserved punishment. Perhaps that dark void was her punishment.

  But who had lived within that void? A boy with a kind smile whom she had loved? A man, perhaps, who had built a Place of bamboo and wicker? Who had taught her to cook fish? A lover? A man of her own?

  Loss of life she might accept, but loss of love was unforgivable. She must know! She must find more evidence and be sure. She trembled as she followed her logic to its conclusions.

  If she had learned to cook fish, then she might have learned other things as well.

  Thaïle arose and pulled a dress at random from the closet. She wrapped herself in a cloak. She did not need shoes to walk in the forest, nor any other garment for what she planned. She stepped out into the moonlight and set off along the Way, shivering a little — partly from the cold, but mostly from shame.

  * * *

  There was still light showing in the Mist Place. For a moment she hovered nervously on the stoop, sensing the boredom and worry and loneliness within. A pixie, lonely? Poor Mist! She could not imagine Mist as a sorcerer. Easier than picking cotton, he had said. Easier still to see the devious, sinister Jain as a sorcerer and the placid, easygoing Mist pulling weeds or just dipping a paddle into sunlit water…

  The frogs were louder than they had been earlier, yet why could he not hear the beating of her heart? Her Feeling gave little sense of direction, but she was fairly sure that he was in bed, or at least in his bedroom. A faint undertone of disgust suggested that he might even be trying to tidy up the Place so that Novice Thaïle would not be upset when she saw it again tomorrow.

  Are you sure this is what you want to do? whispered a tiny voice within her.

  I must know, she replied, and rapped knuckles on the planks.

  Wild alarm within… The floor creaked.

  “Who’s there?” Mist demanded from the other side of the door, deep and threatening.

  “Thaïle. Let me in.”

  Relief and delight… “Wait a minute, then. I haven’t any — I mean, I’m not respectable.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  Incredulity… excitement…

  The door opened a crack, and two eyes peered out below a tangle of hair, all silver pale in the moonlight.

  She said, “Are you going to keep me here shivering all night?”

  Excitement became tinged with embarrassment — and shame. “But I… I haven’t any clothes on.”

  She pushed the door, and Felt his disbelief and wildly mounting joy as it creaked slowly open. He retreated behind it, peering around the edge incredulously. She entered, blinking in the lamplight. She could still see nothing of him except his eyes, yellow again now and stretched impossibly wide.

  Her mouth was dry. “Promise me you’ll be gentle?” she whispered.

  “I promise! Oh, I promise!” He pushed the door closed and wrapped her quickly in his arms. “I do love you!”

  2

  Faint lichens of moonlight clung to darkness on the cottage walls. Frogs croaked far away. Mist snored softly at Thaïle’s side, facedown, one heavy arm across her. The performance was over: the heaving, the sweating, the gasps and cries, and — yes, admit it! — the heart-stopping surges of rapture.

  Over. She felt soiled and guilty, as if she had done something sinful. She also felt used, although it had been she who had tried to use Mist for some insane, nonsensical purpose. What in the world had she hoped to achieve? And what had she in fact achieved, apart from a sort of all-over pummeled feeling, as if she had been rolled down a long hill?

  More sorrow, that was what. She knew now that she had not come to this man’s bed as a trembling virgin. There had been no surprises there. Her body had known what to do, how to respond to his and encourage it. It was probably a lot more experienced than Mist’s was.

  She shivered as her sweaty skin cooled. He stirred. She Felt his sleep fade into a drowsy smugness.

  “I did good, didn’t I?” he muttered.

  She countered, “You mean that’s all?” and at once scolded herself for being catty. Ungrateful, even. A girl ought to appreciate a man willing to exert himself so hard and long.

  Mist’s satisfaction was proof against teasing. He chuckled silently. “Sure is all! Try me again in the morning.”

  She was not going to be here in the morning, that was certain. Her pulse rate had returned to a bearable level. A long cold walk lay between her and that wonderful bathtub waiting at her own Place. As she was about to remove Mist’s sticky hand, though, he seemed to rouse a little more. “Who’s Leéb?”

  Her heart began to hammer again.

  “Who?”

  Mist yawned, and stretched sensuously. “That last time. You got kinda wild. Kept calling me Leéb.”

  Leéb? It sounded like someone’s name, but she knew nobody called Leéb. “You heard wrong.”

  “Nawp! It was Leéb, Leéb, Leéb… Leéb this, Leéb that. Well, I did everything you wanted, honey, and then some. One last kiss… Hey! Where’yu going?”

  “Bathtub.” She slid her feet to the garment-strewn floor. Mist grunted and rolled over, sinking down into sleep even as he did so. She pulled a cover over him and went out into the front room. She managed to locate her cloak near the outer door. Curiously reluctant to call for lights, she decided to leave her dress wherever Mist had thrown it; doubtless he would keep it as a souvenir. She left the cottage, closing the door quietly.

  The moon was low in the sky, the forest cooler and dark. There was no rain. Thaïle Place she thought firmly as she reached the shimmering paleness of the Way, and its grittiness was pleasantly familiar under her feet.

  Leéb? The word meant nothing. A man? A place? A river, perhaps. But she had called it out at the ultimate moment of ecstasy, the moment — so an old song said — when the God of Love caressed the soul.

  Most of a year missing from her life, nine or ten months at least. Almost long enough to… No, that was absurd. She wouldn’t think about that. But now she was sure. Certainly that had not been the first time a man had made love to her. Leéb? Who else?

  Gods, but she was tired! Kneaded! Mist was heavy.

  Leéb! She had a name for him now, at least, if not a face ye
t.

  Now what? All her life she had been taught to revere the Gods, the Keeper, the College.

  Who defends us from the demons?

  The Keeper and the College.

  Whom do we serve?

  The Keeper and the College.

  Who never sleeps?

  The Keeper.

  But now the Keeper and the College had stolen away a year of her life and the love of her life. They had brought her here against her will. They expected her cooperation, yet they had coerced her, and tricked her. Could anything demons might do be worse than that?

  Leéb? Who was Leéb?

  To serve the Keeper and the College — to serve the Gods… But the Gods Themselves must seek to aid the Good. The Gods, the College, the Keeper, and humble little Thaïle — they all should follow that highest loyalty. She could see little evidence that any of them had been doing so.

  The wind was rising, stirring the trees, and she hugged her cloak tight against the chill. Her feet were frozen. The moon was low behind her, throwing her shadow far ahead along the Way, amid the many writhing shadows of branches.

  Was there any escape from the College? If she and Mist were correct, then the College was no single place at all. There were bits of it scattered all over Thume. Her own cottage stood in woods familiar to her, among trees like the trees that grew near her birthplace. The Mist Place was familiar to Mist. It made sense. It was very convenient. Nice magic.

  What would happen, then, if she just left her cottage in the morning and headed west, say, or south — or any direction except along the Way? Would she emerge from the sorcery of the College and find herself in the foothills of the Progiste Mountains, close to her parents’ Place? That seemed very unlikely. There must be sorcery to stop strangers blundering in. There would be sorcery to keep the inmates from blundering out.