A Handful of Men: The Complete Series

by Dave Duncan

  “Quair was not old as sorcerers measure old,” Baze continued, still staring steadily at her, like an owl. “So how did he die? What kills a sorcerer?”

  She choked on her drink. “Sir, I do not know. No one mentioned him to me. They did not tell me how he had died.”

  “He was an appraiser.”

  Novices, trainees, recorders, archivists, analysts, archons, the Keeper….

  “So you have not yet learned of the appraisers?”

  “No, sir. Archon, I mean.”

  “There are eight archons,” the dry old voice said. “Although only seven at the moment, as Sheef has not been replaced. I wonder why? There may be many appraisers or none at all, at the Keeper’s whim. I do not know how many there are just now.” He sounded petulant about that.

  Thaïle muttered something meaningless. She did not want to know about appraisers. She was learning many things that she did not really want to know, and if appraisers were a secret reserved to higher ranks than hers, then she would prefer that they remain so.

  Very slowly Baze turned his head again to face the lake. “Appraisers travel the world. They go in disguise, and study in detail that which the Keeper sets them to study. They are extensions of the Keeper, additional eyes for the Keeper.”

  Two days ago Master Teal had specifically said that no pixie ever left Thume, except for the Keeper. The Keeper watched Outside and might choose to travel Outside in person. The Keeper could do whatever she, or he, wished and need account to no one, not even the archons, who must remain within Thume. So Teal had said, and it was not the first time he had said it, either. Had he lied, or did Thaiile now know an arcane archon secret that a mere analyst did not?

  Baze sighed. “Troubled times.”

  “Yes, Archon.”

  “They are spelled to die, of course. If they are discovered, if their disguise is penetrated, if others’ power comes upon them—they are consumed.”

  Thaïle shivered and laid her beaker down on the bench with a clatter. Baze raised a hand and rubbed his eyes.

  “Now Quair is dead and I must share the word lest it die with me.”

  She nodded.

  “I make you unhappy, child,” Baze whispered to the lake. “What do the young care of an old man’s maundering? Sixty years I was an archon, and you—you will be one for so little a time! Come close and I will share Oopan with you and let you go.”

  2

  Thaïle raced along the way, fleeing from the memory of glory and the old man’s pain. The word of power reverberated in her mind like thunder or the drumming of waterfalls. It had illuminated the world for her as lightning might brighten a night sky, but on the Way all power was curtailed and shut in, restricted to fear and memory. When she left the Way that splendor would blaze again; she wanted help and protection.

  The Way twisted beneath her urgent feet and in moments brought her unwitting to the Library. She stood in the rank sea grass upon the cliff top, seeing the breakers far below churn whiteness around the rocks and hearing the cry of the gulls. Even the spray seemed distinct, a myriad cloud of diamonds flying in the sun. The ancient buildings towered around her like sea stacks, grim and secret. They were closed to her, but the world had opened up again. She sensed the insects creeping among the roots and how the stubborn mussels clung against the tugging of the surf. The blue curve of the sky was alive above her and she understood the needs in the birds’ calling.

  A stone bench stood in the long grass near the ending of the Way. Two people rose from it as she arrived. She saw four. Her eyes made out Master Teal, fatherly and fussy in his middle-blue shirt and breeches, clutching his doublet over his arm because the day was hot. Beside him stood Analyst Shole, tall and dignified in a golden blouse and patterned skirt. They smiled a welcome.

  But with her new occult vision she also saw them as they truly were. Teal was grossly fat and hairy, no more fatherly than a cave bat. Shole was far older than she normally appeared, a scraggy relic, patched like an ancient cabin whose logs had rotted and been replaced. His smile was a drool of naked lusts and hers a grimace of tiny teeth in the mouth of some predatory fish.

  Hideous in body, deformed in mind, the two old sorcerers reached out together to grope inside Thaïle’s mind. She saw images of slimy, sucking tentacles and struck them away with horror. Teal and Shole recoiled, exchanging shocked glances.

  “Archon Baze has shared the word with you?” Teal asked, smiling falsely. The silver fur on his flabby breasts was matted with sweat. His lust had shriveled and been replaced by fear. She sensed the fear sprouting on him like mold on bread and knew that this was madness. The word had driven her insane.

  “Your Faculty is remarkable, child,” said Shole, her small teeth glinting and stirring heinous memories. “We must establish now what power you wield, for we shall be asked.” She stood behind a wall of transparent bricks, her image blurring and shirting like a reflection in water. Was she doing that deliberately? Hiding, concealing? Somewhere, sometime, Thaïle had met that smile in a buried, forgotten past….

  A clawed hand reached for Thaïle’s face. She smote it aside. Shole fell back a step and cried out.

  “Take care!” Teal cried. “You may do her an injury!”

  “Injury?” Thaïle shouted. “What would you do with me?” She spun around, meaning to flee, and was restrained. Soothing melody and soft pillows—the two sorcerers were at her side, dreamily calming and reassuring, quieting the clamor of life from the grass and the buds and the distant forests.

  “It is a normal reaction,” Teal murmured. “In an hour or so you will feel better.”

  “You are a mage now,” the woman said. “It takes time to adjust Come inside, out of the sunshine.”

  The tentacles writhed about her, becoming scaly limbs like those of a giant insect or perhaps young dragons, and then thickets of thorns. Surely power had brought madness? Thaïle struggled against the occult delusions, striving to see her companions in their familiar forms. A flash of sorcery dazzled her, transporting all three of them to the steps of the Chancery. Its bulk loomed dark against the sky, crick ancient stone promising sanctuary and coolness and a blessed shielding to shut out the clamor of the overbright world. As she was guided to the doors, she saw the tiny cracks in the grain of the wood, the rust on the hinges, little silver spiderwebs. She sensed the millions of feet that had trodden the granite of the steps, and the weight of years.

  Then she was within; there was peace and cool twilight She let her companions guide her to a bench and sank down thankfully, shivering in the sudden chill held captive by the walls. There was no one else in the Chancery except a couple of trainees poring over documents on the topmost floor. A beaker was thrust into her hands, and she drank, her teeth chattering on the rim.

  She sat then for a moment, huddled over and staring miserably at the flagstones, and yet well aware of the two sorcerers lurking alongside. Slowly she became aware of a low sea-sound rising out of the silence, a soft rumble like distant surf, or wind playing with a forest. Or a murmur of thousands of voices. Growing.

  “The old fool has told her two words,” Teal said furiously, but he had not spoken aloud, and he had intended the message only for the sorceress.

  “I fear not. I think just one.”

  “A mage so strong? It is impossible!”

  The background voices were growing more insistent, an uncounted multitude muttering, trying to speak to her, Thaïle.

  She looked up in alarm, realizing that she was hearing the books themselves, the myriad volumes that filled gallery upon gallery in the Chancery. The most sacred and ancient records the College possessed were stored here, and she was hearing them. Teal and Shole stood over her, pulsating phantoms of terror and jealousy obscuring their mundane selves. Why were they so frightened?

  Out of the sibilant muttering of the books, one voice was starting to emerge… It alone was speaking her name.

  “Are you feeling any better now, dear?” Shole asked. Hatred and fear bur
ned in green fire about her.

  “A little, thank you,” Thaïle said weakly. Where and when had she seen this woman before? Before she came to the College. Deep anger stirred, fighting for memory.

  Her Feeling had returned. She had almost forgotten her talent in the last few weeks, because it worked only on her fellow novices and trainees, and not even on all of them. As an adept she had learned how to suppress it, and had taken to doing so out of respect for others’ privacy. Now she could read her companions’ emotions as easily as mundanes’. She could not ignore their feelings, for they bore a rank smell of danger. They were as repellent as their owners: apprehension, jealousy, resentment, and a seething desire to dominate and use.

  “Do you see that chair?” the sorceress asked. “Can you lift it? From here, I mean?”

  Startled, Thaïle looked where the woman pointed. Some distance away along the hallway a massive throne of carved oak stood against the wall, old and dusty, abandoned there ages ago, serving no especial purpose.

  “Work magic, you mean?”

  “Of course. Try it.”

  Thaïle thought, and wished, and the chair wobbled, then began to rise.

  “Well done,” Shole said, but her cheerful tone hid an angry, frightened hiss. “Keep lifting.”

  The chair grew heavier. The sorceress was pushing downward. Thaïle resisted, lifting harder. The hall began to pulsate with power. Shole’s withered form glowed with effort, and yet the chair continued to rise.

  “Help me!”

  Teal joined in. A deep throb seemed to permeate the whole building. Anger and fear grew stronger, and provoked anger in Thaïle also. The battle of power was hurting her. Resenting the unequal odds, she summoned all her will—

  With an echoing crash, the chair exploded into dust. Power dissipated in a flash like a lightning stroke. Thaïle fell back against the wall, and the two sorcerers staggered. God of Mercy! On the topmost floor, the two students raised their heads, startled by the noise.

  “Incredible!” Teal thought to Shole, but Shole was too stunned to reply. The contest had pained her.

  In the occult silence that followed, the multitude of voices became audible again, most just clamoring impersonally for Thaïle’s attention, but that single voice still rising out of them, one book calling out to her by name. She could not distinguish the words. It spoke in an unfamiliar accent, an antique dialect

  “Well, you are a mage of uncommon power. Novice,” Teal said with a heartiness belied by the envy that writhed over him in snakes of fire. “I must stop calling you by that name! You need no tutors now.”

  “I don’t?” Thaïle said, looking up at him in alarm. These new abilities overwhelmed her. She wanted guidance and support and reassurance—and yet she would trust nothing these two twisted antiquities told her.

  “Look!” He snapped his fingers and a thick leather-bound volume appeared in his hand.

  It could not have come from outside, because the building was shielded. Somehow Thaïle traced it back and found the shelf he had taken it from, and the gap. How had she done that?

  With a smirk. Teal blew dust from the book. Then he held it out to her, unopened. “Read it!”

  She did not need to take it from him. It was a catalogue of all the men and women who had known the word Istik in the last seven hundred years—analysts, archons, and even a couple of Keepers. Their lives and deeds were listed, and some notes on their powers. Many of them had been especially gifted at foreseeing trouble, as if that were a characteristic of that particular word. They included Archon Poor, one of her own ancestors, a distinguished member of her Gifted family.

  “Try,” Teal said.

  “I don’t need to. I can see what it says. But there is another…” She listened, seeking to isolate that one insistent voice from all the thousands of others. She dampened those others, and then the One gleamed more brightly. It was on the topmost gallery, on a high shelf, coated in webs. She reached for it and it jumped easily into her hands, solid and heavy and slightly warm.

  She sneezed at the dust that came with it. Her eyes watered, but she did not need eyes in this dark hall.

  “This one,” she said. “The writing is strange. Why, it is full of prophecies! I can’t—”

  “Give me that!” Shole screamed, and the book vanished.

  Thaïle jumped to her feet in fury. “How dare you! Where did you put it?” It must still be in the building. “Ah! Down there!” In the cellar. Again she reached.

  Shole blocked her, Thaïle shoved her aside, yet neither had moved.

  “Stop!” the sorceress cried, her panic brightening the corridor. “That one is not for you, not yet!” She hurled a shielding over the littered, cobwebby table where the book lay. The occult noise was another clap of thunder, louder even than the chair had made.

  Of course creating a shield was always a very conspicuous use of sorcery—how did Thaïle know that? The book’s voice had stopped. She wondered if she could break a shielding now. It was just a matter of strength, she saw…

  “Thaïle!” Shole said in violet and gold urgency. “Please! Do not meddle with that book! That one needs authorization from the Keeper.”

  “I think we should go now,” Teal said shrilly. “You must go home, Thaïle, and rest awhile. Use your new powers sparingly at first, won’t you?” He was very worried, planning to report to the archons and unload his responsibility as soon as possible.

  Thaïle looked at his sweaty, bulbous, white-furred image and shuddered. “Yes, I shall go home,” she muttered.

  Home? What Place? Again old memories stirred under the tumult of the day, but she could not reach them.

  3

  A pixie in trouble went to her place and shut the door on the world. If the trouble was serious enough, she curled up on the bed. Perhaps a married pixie needed her goodman there, also—that aspect Thaïle did not know, not having a man. Silence and solitude were enough. After a while she felt calmer and could begin to explore the new powers she had gained from Oopan.

  By evening she was feeling better. She was feeling hungry, too. She would have to face people again eventually. She decided she must seek out some company—after all, occult promotion was cause for celebration, usually. Lying on the bed, sucking the end of a curl, she ran through her mental list of acquaintances. Rather to her surprise, she discovered that the women on it had much less appeal at the moment than the men. Reassurance from a deep-pitched voice would be more convincing, a male smile more gratifying—something to do with the chin? She laughed at herself and decided it must be the bed making her feel that way. She rolled off, straightened up, and ran to the bathroom.

  As she made herself presentable, she reviewed her list again, the masculine part of it. Three novices and two trainees survived her first pruning. Most of the novices were too juvenile, most of the trainees not juvenile enough. Mist, of course, was long gone from the College. Of the five novices in that class, only she and Woom had survived the test of the Defile. Woom had his faults, but by the time she was slipping on her shoes, she had decided to brighten Woom’s evening for him. In fact, she had known from the start that her choice would be Woom.

  She trotted down her steps and started across the glade, sensuously aware of the warm summer night. The western sky was streaked with gold clouds and long shadows lay on the grass. She opened her mind and detected someone a long, long way off to the south. How strange that such beautiful country had no more people in it! The Gaib Place had been isolated, but the Thaïle Place seemed to have the world to itself.

  Just as she was about to set foot on the Way, she heard something, and stopped. There it went again! Woodchucks? Jays? Squirrels? Reluctantly she admitted it was children laughing. She tried again to Feel someone, and found no one. She scanned the forest with farsight, and although her range was many times greater than it had been before, she again detected no sign of human life.

  The ghostly laughter had gone. Perhaps new magical powers were just hard to get used t
o and she would return to sanity in a day or two. Calling the Woom Place to mind, she set off along the Way.

  Two or three bends were enough for that journey, because the landscape hardly had to change. Conifers became more common, hardwood rarer, the temperature dropped slightly. The cottage came into farsight and then into view. It was a very good Place, in a rocky clearing with a crystal stream. Woom was not home. She could hear him, though. Even without magic she would have located him, a few minutes’ walk uphill. He was chopping wood.

  What an absurd thing to do! How typically male! The greatest joy of belonging to the College was freedom from drab toil. Let the rest of the world spend the whole of its days digging and plowing and pruning and harvesting and scrubbing—and chopping! With sorcery the monotony vanished and life was freed for living, Jain had explained that to her long ago and she had not believed him. She had not seen Jain around lately.

  She came through the trees behind Woom. There he was, stripped to the waist, whacking viciously with an ax at the corpse of a tree. The steady thump of his blows, the play of light on his back and shoulders… Memories stirred. Not her father, for he never worked without a shirt on. Who? Who had chopped wood like that while she watched? Perhaps Wide, her sister’s goodman? No, he was so lazy he sent his wife to gather sticks. Yet Thaïle had certainly watched someone doing that. She suspected that the next stage was for him to throw down the ax and her to jump into his arms. What a strange notion!

  Woom was an adept, he could hear sparrows blink. He turned around and watched her approach.

  She waved. He had been a dweller-under-rocks when she first met him, human slime. The Defile had changed all that. He had emerged as a solemn, stolid young man. He was half a year younger than she, not quite old enough to rouse serious intentions in either of them, but old enough that they both knew the idea was possible.

  He wiped his forehead with his arm, ran fingers through wet hair. “I am Woom and welcome you to the Woom Place.”