Lens of the World

by R. A. MacAvoy

  Abruptly the terror consumed itself and left me. “His name is Powl, sir.”

  King Rudof winced, but not as though surprised. A thin, bitter grin spread across his face. “You do not try to hide it, then.”

  I answered him, “There is nothing worth hiding,” which, taken as a general statement, does not represent Powl’s teaching at all. “I studied with him for three years, alone on a hill: optics, language, natural science and philosophy, combat… even dance. What offense is there in that, sir?”

  The king did not answer, and the morning air was traced with birds’ song. At last he said, no louder than a whisper, “I would die to be you.”

  So strong was my confidence in my teacher’s teaching that I felt no disproportion in his words but only a strong compassion for the man, the king.

  I tried to smile. “Sir, you would not want to spend three years in a box of brick, sweeping out a faulty oven, with no company save for a high-handed teacher a few hours each day, until you begin to jabber to yourself like a monkey in a cage…”

  One glance reminded me that the king was a brilliant man, and no condescension escaped him. He had composed his features when he replied, “Whether I would or not is of no moment, fellow, for the Earl of Daraln, Viscount Korres—your Powl—has refused three times the command to teach me what he knows.”

  The Earl of Daraln, Viscount Korres.

  “My teacher only called himself Powl. It’s a common enough name, sir. He dressed as a well-off burgher.” Though I had to say this, I really did not doubt a syllable of the titles.

  Irony elongated the king’s face. “And did he act like a well-off burgher?”

  Now the smile came unforced, involuntarily. “Sir, he acted like no one else on earth.”

  For a quick moment the king’s mood matched mine, and then black anger replaced it. “So do you, Nazhuret.” He turned his face toward the village again and spoke over his shoulder these words: “I will have him killed. For treason.”

  “I repeat,” Powl had said, “you must stay out of the reach of officialdom, for with what you now know it will be deadly to you.”

  Powl: in his burgher-dandy clothes. My arrogant, egalitarian, graceful, and complacent scientist and seer. My personal magician and fighting instructor. How I wished he had burned out my tongue before letting me loose upon the world, as the military might of Velonya continued north. Having as its goal, his death.

  It is dead of winter and no usual winter, either. Every window in this low oratory opens out into blank white and cold blue light. It is not the wind that has driven ice against the windows, sir; it is simply that the snow is that deep. Yesterday I went out for wood, wearing cumbersome rawhide snowshoes to ride the powder, and I find only the peak of the place visible, like the prow of a foundering ship. Deer are dying in their sleep and frozen upright; I locate them by ears or antlers, or by sad dimples in the snow.

  When you will get this chapter of my history I do not know, sir. Are you frozen in your palaces in Vestinglon—a bright court, unsullied, unspoiled, unmoving? In this deep pocket of the year it is difficult to say truly that any of us is alive.

  I reside in a blue, cold purgatory: number seven of twelve, if I remember my catechism. I have no distractions now to continuing a horrid tale, except that of numb fingers. I know I shall not escape this winter, or this story except by coming out on the other side.

  My king, I hear laughter over my head in the air. Wonder of wonders. The sound is bright as icicles, warm as horses, and it comes from above the slate roof itself. It must be some children or other, playing with the snowshoes as I did myself. I hope none falls off the webs.

  The king’s progress, which had seemed so slow when it was fascinating to me, picked up a malicious speed now that it had become deadly. The roads in the North of the territory and in Satt above it were much more traveled and better kept, and in Apek, the town lying suburban to Warvala, they exchanged their cumbersome wagons and pavilions for coaches, while the sturdy horses suitable for border use were retired in favor of the mounts with fine paces, which they had left behind weeks ago on the way south.

  As they rode, I ran behind them, for I could neither leave the progress and its terrible intent nor accept hospitality from the king. My boots gave out under this treatment, and then I ran barefoot. For food, when I had stomach to eat it, I snared rabbits or begged from the householders on the way.

  The first day they rode enthusiastically on their fresh horses, but on the second I caught up. The king was riding an elegant chestnut, exactly the color of his own hair, and was surrounded by a mixed party of nobles and favored soldiers.

  The shoulder of the road was grassy and wide, and I managed to keep pace, though no attempt at communication was possible. Three times horsemen in the blue of Velonya or the black and yellow of Leoue rode out of the line to slap me off, one with a whip and two with the flat of a sword, but like a dog running cattle I did the least necessary to avoid the strike and I came on. It was at the third attempt against me that the king noticed my presence, and I heard him call the man away.

  I locked for a moment with the king’s eyes, and there I met honest rage, and in the face of Leoue—his bullmastiff—was written strong disgust. Certainly I was enough to inspire disgust: dirty, with bandy legs pumping, my ancient woolens bagged out in sweat. My hair was in my eyes and my pack was abandoned on the road behind, with blanket, lenses, tools, all. Only my dowhee remained, slung behind me in my belt. What use it would be to me against the king’s army I had no idea.

  The nights grew cooler so slowly my sweat dried before it had a chance to chill me. When I was not chasing the king I spent my time either asleep (when I could) or in the belly of the wolf. If I tried any other pastime my dreads drove me to phlegm, tears, or fury.

  It seemed to me that I had possessed in my life one friend and one teacher. The friend I had left to crawl off to die while I engaged in unnecessary heroics. My teacher I had bragged into a sentence of death. Myself I was not allowed to kill, by commandment of the Triune Monism, and the king, my enemy, would not help me even to die.

  This very emotional attitude settled in a few days into a black stolidity, while I ran and watched and concentrated on nothing.

  Three days after the king’s last angry words to me, I caught up to him as he sat out in the midday sun, at a crude hostelry table holding tea in a porcelain cup. He was surrounded by soldiers, but none of them was of any great rank nor known to me personally. I don’t remember if any rose to prevent me access to the king, but I know I soon was seated before him in all my stinking dirt, and I well remember that the differences in our heights made it appear that I was on my knees before him.

  “Don’t bother, Nazhuret,” he began, looking beside, above, and beyond me. “You can only embarrass us both.”

  I was astonished that he could speak of embarrassment when the subject should have been life and death. “I am beyond embarrassment, my king,” I said.

  “And you are too late courtly, with your ‘my kings.’” Rudof’s face sparkled with anger and his long hands pulled slivers of wood out of the table as I watched. “Nazhuret, you only make yourself a figure of fun with this behavior.”

  The chair beneath me was seductive. I pulled myself out of a slouch. “I have seen no one laughing, sir, but I will apologize for my courtesy if you desire and call you ‘my king’ no more.”

  “I never was your king, as you made as clear as glass from the beginning.”

  I steeled myself not to meet his anger with some of my own. I knew a dozen ears were listening as well. “Then punish me, sir, and not my innocent teacher.”

  The green eyes elongated and the face went from hot to cold. I thought perhaps he was about to honor my request, or simply have me slain as preprandial to Powl, but the king said, “I gave you my protection completely, lad. I am not one to break my word.”

  I shook my head as earnestly as I knew how. “I did not ask that from you, sir. What I do want is amnesty fo
r the… Earl of Daraln. If that is really Powl’s honor and degree.”

  The long, white face grinned so sharply it was like a stick breaking. “Are you under the impression I care what you want, peasant?”

  “Then kill me instead of Powl—the Earl of Daraln,” I asked him, and his jaw swelled in knots.

  “What if I were to take you up on that, Nazhuret? Have you thought about that?” He glared at me some while longer, and then his face went guarded again. He added, “No, I won’t trade you, lad. He is the traitor, not yourself.”

  I heard a repetitive, dull knock against the wooden wall behind the king, and after a moment’s confusion I knew someone was pushing a broom there. Cleaning the hostelry’s public room. A job I had done dozens of times, not three months before.

  It hit me with killing pain that there was some soul, uninvolved and probably without an ounce of dread in his soul, so close. The king’s visit was an excitement of a day, and that was all.

  It’s strange about the mind of a man: that I remember this little noise and yet have forgotten what the name of the town was, and what men were present at this interview. Memory is like torn paper; some inches rip straight with the angle of the force applied, and others, indistinguishable in any way, frill off into a lace of layers and fibers.

  Not straightforward at all.

  I tried another tack. “Since you know I am a peasant—no, not even that, but a nobody entirely—doesn’t that explain to you, sir, why the earl would have chosen to practice his techniques on me? I mean—he said himself he had not attempted such a thing before, and surely he would not waste your time on techniques that had not proved themselves.”

  King Rudof eased his chair backward against the sun-warm wall. “Nazhuret, you appall me. You betray yourself and your masters teachings with this… sophistry. You do not really have any doubts concerning your education, or your skills. Respect my native intelligence also.”

  My mind whirled for a minute, for the king was entirely correct. I tried again: “Sir, I meant he was uncertain before. A few years ago. If you were to try him again—”

  The King of Velonya winced, not in pride but in pain. He rose. “Don’t talk like that, boy. I importuned your Powl every day he was at court, from the time he returned last from Felonka, with that barbaric sword you wear on your back. That was what? Six years ago, when my father still was in good health and I unmarried. Don’t think I don’t know the man and his meaning. He decided that I, and therefore Velonya, were to be without the benefit of his understanding.” Rudof rose to his feet, and I tilted my head after him. In my weariness, the angle hurt. The king saw as much, and it seemed to make him happier.

  “I don’t think you can find him, sir,” I said, though I knew it wasn’t politic to taunt or encourage such danger. “I doubt I could find Powl now.”

  King Rudof hung above me and smiled. “There I have the advantage over you, Nazhuret. I know exactly where the earl lives. In retirement, very near the city of Sordalia. And I know how rarely he leaves home.”

  As King Rudof turned and went into the inn he had requisitioned (and where the man wielded his broom, his broom, his broom against the wall), my pervading fear was tainted with an odd jealousy—for those parts of Powl that the young king possessed and that I never could. This seems to be a history of jealousy.

  I don’t believe I noticed when we were back in the forests: back in the North. I was perhaps the fifth day of my running, and I was not fit for much. What brought it to my brute attention were the lamps winking covertly among the trees.

  In the dry South one can see houses clearly a long way off.

  I lay without a fire some yards from the van of the king’s progress. In the new grass, stinking to heaven with sweat and fear. I remember it was the day that food was brought to me: bits and scraps from a foot soldier who spoke not a word but laid the iron plate beside my head. From the looks of it, my meal was apportioned from many men’s plates, and some of the pieces were good, not the sort of thing one throws away.

  First the food upset my shrunken stomach and then it made me drowsy. I lay as always waiting for a glimpse of the king, so that I might repeat the substance of my first, second, or third interview on the subject of Powl in still different words.

  Perhaps this time he would be sick of me and order my death.

  What I saw among the boles of the oaks (here it still was too dry for maple or birch) was a fire that burned in no lamp. My brains seemed to have been left along the road with my lenses, for I wondered if we were about to be victims of another nomad raid: here, on the borders of Satt and Velonya, where there had been quiet since King Posln Dekkan unified the first kingdom three hundred years ago, and where many farmhouses had stood unbroken for longer.

  After perhaps thirty minutes, I realized that this leaping glow was only a campfire—probably that of some rural person who wanted a glimpse of the king. I wanted to believe it was Arlin, of course, though even at the time I knew that such ale

  dreams could do no more than break me further. I rose and followed the fire’s light, staggering from tree to tree, but the light vanished before I was halfway toward it, and though I followed the smell of a doused fire, it was too dark to recognize anything besides the embers.

  That night the king was staying in the manor of some noble or other. There was a small ancient castle stuffed with oat hay, I recall, and a modern brick establishment next to it. I had the good fortune to step out of the park at the moment Rudof and his field marshal came out for the evening air.

  Maybe it was not good fortune. Perhaps they had waited to see me go before deciding to walk, and my quick return ruined a pleasant evening.

  I fell in step behind them, like a lackey or a pet dog. It was Leoue who first noticed the movement, and he turned on me with a roar and a cavalry saber.

  The king’s scream came too late; I was forced to dodge under the hiss of the blade. King Rudof put his hands over the duke’s face, obscuring his vision as I backed out of the way.

  “I told you! And I told you again, Leoue! You are not to harm the boy!”

  The big duke sputtered, “But he… he was… How was I to know…”

  I understood his bullmastiff’s feelings, for one cannot always stop to ask credentials in the dark. I tried to apologize but was not very coherent. The king ordered him a few yards away from us. It took more than one command to pry the man away from his king.

  “What is it, you piece of misery?” With these words King Rudof welcomed me. “I hope you have a new subject in mind tonight.”

  I thought I did. “Sir, I could teach you. Anything I know, I could teach you.”

  First he seemed amused, but then his features pulled awry. “You are expert, Nazhuret, but you are not the Earl of Daraln.”

  I answered that I knew that, but added, “Once I lay Powl in the dust. I did. So stunned he was that I had to drag him into the house and pull his shoes off. Once.”

  It sounded so like braggartism. Pitiful braggartism, too.

  “Have you?” asked the king. “I am impressed, fellow. Perhaps you can teach me something. But will you still want to after I have killed your Powl for you?”

  “You are possessed of a devil,” I said to the king, and he hit me across the face hard enough to clear my angry head.

  I saw the king by the light of the tall windows behind, and I saw the field marshal ease closer, his dog-dark eyes on his master, waiting for one word.

  Rudof himself stared at his own right hand. “You let me do that, churl! You stood there and allowed it.”

  The accusation took me aback. “Of course I did.”

  “Why?”

  I shrugged. “Because you are the king. If you want to hit me, then I’ll be hit.”

  Slowly he shook his head from side to side. “Oh, I am right to avoid you, Nazhuret, and your damned condescension. You let me hit you as you’d let a five-year-old child hit you. Are you amused by me, then? Are you entertained by the King of Velonya?”
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  “No, sir,” I answered. “I am not entertained at all. You have made me want to die.”

  At this the field marshal stood forward. “I can help him there,” he said, his hand on his sword.

  There was laughter from inside the big house, bright as the yellow windows against the darkness. (Yellow windows or blue, the sound is uncanny.)

  “I think Nazhuret will find the sword a different matter, Leoue,” said the king, his words thickened, the hand that had hit me wiping his own face. “A random box to the ear is one thing, but—”

  “No, my king,” I said in someone else’s voice. “If you want to kill me, then I’ll be killed.”

  King Rudof was a dark shadow against the windows as he looked down silently. He turned and the door was opened. The light and the chatter grew much louder for a moment, and then I was standing in the night with Duke Leoue.

  I expected him to spurn my company with equal fervor, but the massive man stood for two minutes unspeaking, and I myself had run out of things to say. Finally he cleared his throat.

  “I cannot pronounce your name,” he stated.

  “No matter, my lord. It’s a strange name,” I answered.

  “It’s the devil’s name,” he corrected me, without apparent rancor. “In South language. The King of Hell. The Rezhmian horse troops would shout that name as they cut our knights off at the knees.”

  I didn’t argue with him.

  “You did not condemn your earl, you know,” he added, and to my amazement the Duke of Leoue sat down on the grass, grunting, and dropped his saber at his feet. “He was a traitor before you were born: parcel with Eydl of Norwess’s sedition. If the old king had not been besotted with his… his personal charm… he would have been eliminated after his return from the Rezhmian incursion.”

  He turned his massive bear head in my direction. “The Rezhmians conquered us in body, but Powl they won in mind also. He came back their tool.”