I could not expect the horse to have continued my job for me, but I slid down anyway and looked over the glorious carpet of bloom for some sign of a horse’s passage. There was nothing.
I was shaking with cold though the sun was shining. Bright air, bright water, and the purple of the flower cups, each holding blood-red threads within. The place and time had that calm sweetness that accompanies funerals and makes them harder for me to bear. I squatted on a stone with needles of pain driving in through my ears, gagging on a dry stomach, and it seemed to me the beauty was telling me that Arlin was already dead.
In my shirt pocket was the tincture of poppy, and I drank from it, taking in my clumsiness more than I had been advised to swallow, I put my hands over my ears and my nose between my knees and made a ball of myself, while the borrowed horse wandered over the flowers, looking for something better than crocuses to eat.
I awoke when a man picked me up and put me over his shoulder. There was little I could do to resent the liberty. Neither did I feel much resentment, for his hands were kindly (though large, and he thumped me between the shoulders as though I ought to be burped. He was a large fellow, long-faced, yellow-haired, well-tailored, and no more belonging on that empty prominence on the borders of the southern territories than might a flock of peacocks. Out of the comer of my eye I could see a gown of blue silk with white embroidery, which floated with the wearer’s movement, or perhaps it was only a lace of high clouds in the sky that I saw, moving with the spring winds.
He carried me with no sign of effort, and even in my sickness and stupor I thought that here I had come upon a real Old Velonyan, wide as a house and strong as an ox. I saw the stones and the flowers pass under his feet, and then there was the door of a very fine house under the oak trees, where I had previously seen only air, and as the gentleman took me over the threshold (kicking the door open with his foot, I recall), my head lolled and I could see that there actually was a gown of blue silk, and above it rose the face of a young woman—tiny, dark, and very beautiful. There was something more to be noted about her, but as we passed into the house I found that my poor stock of attention was used up.
Again I came to, propped on a grand bed of heavy wood intricately carved, but it was not silk-dressed like such a bed called out to be. Instead it was clad in good white linen, like my bed back at the observatory, or like the beds at Sordaling School. Beside me sat these two unlikely protectors of mine, seated together as calm as a portrait, but less formally. Like couples long married, though neither seemed old. The room, like the bed, was of carved wood, green or brown or golden I cannot remember.
For such an exalted chamber the furniture was very curious; the chairs were solid oak, with their backs in the shape of a heart and a small heart cut into the top of each, and pillows of red broadcloth were tied to the seats, cottage-style. The windows were large rectangles such as are found neither in grand houses nor cottages but in institutions without pretensions to luxury, such as schools, and on the far wall hung—I swear it—the sort of wooden clock that holds a bird.
Here I woke with an idea that I had been fed by the hands of this kind couple, though how that might have been accomplished while I had fainted I don’t know. It occurred to me that I ought to explain to them about the injury to my ears, so that they did not think they were befriending a halfwit, and I turned to where the lady sat beside me, to signal somehow or to ask for paper, and seeing her clearly, I stopped and gaped—a half-wit indeed. She was surpassingly beautiful, with a tiny, heart-shaped face, black hair, eyes of the earthy green of the quiet lakes of Ekesh, and despite the eyes she was without doubt Rezhmian.
Behind her the tall blond man met my gaze and said nothing. He put his hands over her shoulders, and his eyes, ordinary blue, met mine. He smiled at me, and though his face was young, I had only seen such a smile on the faces of very old people. She did not smile, but she put out her hands, tiny like bird wings, and touched my face with them, stroking my hair back over my ears. I saw that her fingers came away tinted with blood, and I looked down at their clean sheets with concern. It came to me that I ought to go die someplace else, so as not to bother them. It seemed to me that I had had this thought once before in another context, but I could not recall it exactly, I propped myself up, which deed was no longer difficult, for the dizziness was gone, but when I raised my head again the blond gentleman was standing over me and extending (of all unlikely things) a very young baby.
Except at weddings, a beggar like myself is not asked for blessings, but I found myself taking the child, who kicked in its white wrapping, and saying the traditional words “Grace to you from the Trinity: God the Father, God the Mother, and the God Who Is in Us All.” At least I thought I said them; without hearing, it is difficult to know. With tincture of poppy it is difficult to remember.
I let the little one down onto my chest. It had no hair, and its eyes were cloudy baby eyes. It stared at me seriously for a few moments, then wiggled and extended one arm toward my face in the commanding way that babies have, and I felt a great warmth spreading through me.
I thought the little creature had pissed on me; it would not have been the first time such a thing had happened since I had left Powl and become a jack-of-every-trade. This inconvenience was so minor compared to everything else in my day that I laughed aloud while I waked for that quick warmth to turn to chilly wetness. Instead it spread throughout my body and mind, like sudden delight or like the release within lovemaking. When my eyes could see again, the baby had vanished, though my silly arms were still in position, holding nothing but the bright, still air.
Somehow I had lost this fine couple’s child, though I had no idea how, and in bewildered remorse I turned to them, but they were missing, too, and as I peered around the room I was no longer even sure of the identity of the cottage chairs. Nor could I say whether the bird I heard calling was from the carved clock on the wall, or a simple feathered cuckoo on a branch of the oak overhead.
At that moment I became convinced I had fallen into events of great meaning and moment, at least to myself, events not yet categorized by Powl’s observational methods. I did not know what they were, exactly, but if I somehow had the ear of powers greater than King Rudof’s, I did not want to miss my chance. I stood up in the crocuses where there had just now been a tall-post bed, and I called out to the event even as it passed: “Arlin! You must save Arlin, who is actually Lady Charlan, daughter of Howdl of Sordaling City!”
As though the Triune God would not know who people were without my prompting. I heard my words, in my own unexceptional voice, ring over the hills of stone.
As the glitter in the air softened itself into sunlight, I added; “If it pleases Your Graces.”
Of the damage to my ears there was no trace, and the pain and dizziness were vague memories. My borrowed horse was rolling over the crocuses, trying to get rid of the saddle. Both horse and gear had been stained gold with saffron. The hillside was wild and empty.
I found the vial of tincture, and it seemed I had downed almost all of it at one gulp. I certainly had no need of it now. By the position of the sun, I had either been amid the flowers for an entire day and night, or for a short time indeed. I don’t think the horse would have stayed for a day and a night; he was trying to wander off even as I mounted him again.
I do not describe this incident to you with the intent to convince you that I participated in a miracle, sir. There was material in that vial of mine for a great deal of embellishment upon reality. There is material in my head for even more. But as I perceived it, I have recounted.
And later that day, while trying to recover the lost tracks, I discovered a large yellow stain over the front of my woolen shirt and not at all the color of saffron.
I claim, sir, to deal in clear perception, and using weapons of reason and intuition upon it, to arrive at some understanding of what is true. This is an outrageous claim on my part—an arrogant, offensive claim—and perhaps someday I shall have to pay for m
y arrogance.
For the time comes again and again when I cannot make a reasonable assumption out of the perceptions granted me. I could put the events of the day together under the heading “Opium Dreams.” But then what of the yellow stain? Did something else happen in my delirium that my muddled mind translated into a baby who pissed on me and disappeared? Did perhaps a real family, without faces representing the Velonyan and Rezhmian boundaries of my existence and not living in a home made up of bits of places that had been important to me, pick me up and nurse me, and my grandiflorent brain make up the rest? If so, why was I not sick unto death, as I had been, but as well as if I had not been blown up?
If enough time had passed to heal my broken eardrums and the infection they had brought on, then how could I have forgotten the weeks it must have taken to finish the cure, and remembered the first fevered dream alone?
If my brain were that unreliable a tool to me, then how could I hope to sort out my own memories with it? I was lost before I started. I would not know how long I had been gone unless I returned to the king’s procession and asked someone.
As with all events of great moment, I had to pull my interpretation from a dark closet behind my eyes. I chose to believe I had had a kindly visit from God in all three faces at once. I decided that there was significance for me personally in the manner in which the blond man had laid his hands over the shoulders of the dark woman, and that the urine stain on the shirt I wore had great meaning for my future. I also resolved to wash the shirt.
For three days I rode through the sparsely settled countryside, seeking one set of tracks where it seemed half the horses in the known world had trotted by. Arlin’s gray mare had particularly small hooves, only differing from those of the local
ponies by being less round and regular and by having a longer stride. I did not find these prints, nor anything that looked much like them. Each evening I returned to one establishment, that of a poulterer who raised rabbits for their skins and flesh, and I chopped next year’s wood in exchange for oats so I might abuse my poor cavalry horse further. I think I did not eat during those three days, and if I remember correctly I was not at all hungry.
On the evening of the third day I began to believe that I had chosen the wrong style of hunt: that Arlin had returned to the king’s procession as soon as he felt himself (or she felt herself) out of danger from loss of blood. In that case it was I who was missing, and it was possible Arlin would start out again after me and make of this entire emergency a great tangle.
I let the horse rest that night, fed him all the oats I had earned, and pointed him north. Such was the difference between the progress of three hundred men and wagons and the progress of one man mounted that I had found the king’s men by midafternoon.
My friend had not been found; neither had he returned on his own. I remember that as the field marshal gave me that news—gravely enough and without his usual rancor—I had a distinct presentiment of death. Arlin’s, my own, I could not discern, and indeed it seemed to me there would be little difference between the two.
I don’t know what there was about knowing that he was actually she that turned a year’s bickering and uneasy camaraderie into something as deep as the roots of my life. It was not that I was amorous; in the past year I had had brief, enjoyable affairs with three women, all of whom were older than I, all of whom were warm and good company. Arlin I did not imagine approaching sexually, even in daydreams, for she was still too much of he in my perception, and besides, he/she had said she was very picky about the men she appreciated. I might wind up spitted on a dagger.
And yet he called me his “ideal of the true knight and gentleman.” Had he not been serious in those words, the thing would have been a joke. Had he not been a cheating gambler who said it, it would have been mere triteness. Had she not been a person of such solitary purity and courage as to stand alone and unaided against this bloody world for years, I could not have valued the words. As it was, and with her deathly injured, the accolade meant more than my life to me.
Forgive me, sir, my erratic pronouns. Their gender is out of my control.
We had come back to the northern downs, where the hills were sweeter and dotted with trees. Here, almost fifty miles from the border, we would be troubled by no more bands of Rezhmian raiders, and among the slow, grinding wagons the humility of having lost comrades and the gratitude for having survived danger had given way to the boisterous arrogance of having won a battle. I heard the story of the assault and of the king’s glorious petard repeated half a dozen times in the public room of the inn—the same inn where I had stopped on my way south, but now glorified by an air bright with narcissus and thyme.
The landlady remembered me and all our talk of blond slaves and southern cities. Since I had no enthusiasm for talk of battle (nor any talk), I sat myself first before the bar and then behind it, helping draw the tap. I also found myself—out of habit, perhaps—evicting those of the royal company who showed excessive energy in their amusements.
The woman had no husband and was kind enough to offer me a great deal of hospitality, most of which I declined as politely as I knew how. I was very disheartened and at a loss for what to do next. I neither saw the king nor asked for audience with him, but the next morning he sent for me.
King Rudof, as a change from his grand and rickety pavilion, had set himself up at the better inn of the town. It was amusing to see the innkeeper himself, parked with his family at the saddler’s across the way, staring out goggle-eyed at the glory that had descended on his property. He did not appear to feel abused, however, and his children danced delightedly backward in circles with knees locked together (a local specialty) for the edification of the officers.
Of course, the king had the family’s own small suite of rooms, but the paternal bed had been stood on end against one wall and the king’s own bed hauled up the stairs and put in its stead. As I came to him, the king was sitting alone in the room with windows yawning wide, making tentative shots from a nomad’s lacquered bow into the innkeeper’s mattress. Again the king’s easy charm struck me, heavy as a blow.
“Nazhuret,” he said, “I have to admit these toys are an improvement over our own weapons. Why do you suppose they have never caught on in Velonya? Oh, and do pull those quarrels from the ticking for me as you come by.” I returned the little arrows to him, “They are laminated with fish glues, sir. It could be that the cold and wet of our climate are too much for them.”
The king looked straight at me without words for some time. His red hair fell into his face, and one eyebrow rose slowly, like the sun. “You have a speaking countenance, Nazhuret. Odd in a man of your attainments: almost childlike. It is obvious you have not found your friend and that you are distraught about it.”
“It is true I have not found… him, sir. I had hoped he would be with you by now.”
The king took the time to shoot another quarrel. “By now? You left us in the morning three days ago. If the fellow denned up somewhere to heal…”
I listened, feeling very stupid. I had counted three days since the morning after my ambiguous miracle, which would make the time of my absence a minimum of four days.
As though reading my thoughts, the king continued, “But you yourself have done a stalwart job of recovery, lad. Truth to tell, I had more fears of your survival, with your broken ears and staggers, than I had of your card-playing friend. I had thought to stop you for your own good, except that I didn’t want to lose that many men while still in peril of the Red Whips.”
The breeze through the windows was seductive, the air sweetly bright, and this conversation made no sense. I put my face in my hands and screwed my thoughts together. “Sir, I count at least four days since I left your camp. On the first of these I met with kind people who took me in and cured me. I was not sure but that I had spent added days there asleep. Now you tell me what my reason cannot follow…”
He slouched to his feet, gracelessly graceful in the manner of very tall
men, and leaned over to a table under the broad window. He threw a bound book at me. “Here’s our calendar. Let your reason ponder that, and while you’re at it, Nazhuret, note that we are nine days behind on this patrol.”
Patrol. The thought of this multicolored, creaking royal progress as a military patrol took me aback, but I tried not to let my speaking countenance speak. I turned my attention to the calendar, and after a minute of confusion I put it down. “I see. I see but I don’t understand, I will not delay you longer, sir,” I said, and turned to go.
He called me back again. With the light behind him, the king looked more saturnine than boyish. His profile was sharp. “Nazhuret, we owe you much, and it annoys me that you will take no payment. Also, I want you in my service as I have rarely wanted any man, and you will not or cannot give me what I want. Therefore I am doubly annoyed. Nevertheless, I give you this freely: my promise that I will hold you free to come and go through my court and my kingdom, as far as I can stretch the law to allow. You may speak to me any time that you have need or feel that the nation does; my chamberlain will not bar or question you. This while you live.”
He said this much without looking at me. I was dumb—astonished. I had never heard of such a privilege—honor fit to be sought earnestly by sages and wizards—and offered to a creature of no greater moment than myself. I found my hand was in my mouth, which gaped in the most foolish way. “My king,” I said, “I thank you. I will try not to abuse such an honor.”
I would try to run away and never see King Rudof again; that was the way I would not abuse this privilege, which was too dangerous and deep for me. I tried to bow my way out, but again he prevented me.
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