The boys found it difficult to dislike Hasban totally. He revealed a truly hard and nasty streak when provoked by his wife. To them he was generally affable and even his meaner actions, such as moving them to the cottage, brought to mind a good-natured robber.
When they arrived at the cottage with their bedrolls the next morning, Idressin let them in without comment and showed them into the small room they themselves had decorated. Then he led them along to the hollow by the lake again and motioned to them to sit down. Until that moment they had fallen in with the tutor's manner and held back their questions. Now Berin burst out, "How did you know he'd do this, Idressin? Or did you arrange it with him?"
"No, there was no need to arrange it. Hasban's very predictable. He kept you comfortable and entertained while he found out if you could be useful to him. Once he was sure that neither of you is heir to a fortune or related to anyone of great influence, you ceased to be of interest. This is a better place for you anyway. The cottage is safer and more suitable also for study."
"What study?" Berin interjected. "We've been here nearly a month and we haven't studied anything yet."
"No?" The tutor smiled. "Well, perhaps you haven't learned it, but you've been studying one of life's most important lessons, that every task should be undertaken as if it was for ourselves, because in some ways it always is. Most people cheat and end up cheating themselves all their lives."
Something fell into place inside Caldar as he acknowledged Idressin's supreme skill in bringing them effortlessly to this moment. This tutor, like the Tinker, was impossible to classify by the social categories Caldar was used to, but he had some extra dimension that made the boy willing to trust him implicitly. Berin clearly felt the same way, and it was as well that it was so. The next stage of their instruction began at once and it was not easy.
**
That winter Idressin taught them to make baskets. They learned all of it, every step from cutting the willow rods, storing, stripping, splitting and weaving. They started with small crude baskets made with unpeeled rods, and progressed slowly and painfully to large mule panniers and to fancy baskets made of stripped willow rods with rims of wild rose.
It would all have been difficult enough anyway, but Idressin made it more so. He never told them how to do anything; he showed them, working with the same deceptive speed he had demonstrated mending the fishing nets. And he never answered their questions about the job in hand. They could see they were being taught by a master of the craft, but his skill threw their own clumsiness and ignorance into sharp relief, and their frustration was compounded by sore fingers, aching backs and the increasing cold as the bitter Norleng winter set in.
Many times during those winter months their spirits sank low. They were homesick, and the task before them seemed daunting and never-ending. When one of them proudly produced a well-made basket, Idressin pointed out that the true trade involved weaving good baskets quickly; anyone who made them at the rate they did would starve.
As soon as they began to master one type and their weaving showed signs of confidence and speed, he would change to another and they would be observing and copying like beginners again.
The Tinker came at Winterturn, as he had promised, and they celebrated the Long Night in the cottage. The next day would be Berin's Minzin Dahka, so they were celebrating both occasions together. Idressin had managed to produce a fine spread of food and a remarkable quantity of drink, inviting the boys to make free. Tomorrow was to be a holiday. The boys were glad not to be going up to the house. Hasban's son Grellek had turned out to have inherited both his father's greed and his mother's arrogance and after one meeting they had avoided him whenever possible. This was not difficult, as the inhabitants of house and cottage had little cause to see each other in the winter, except when Idressin was summoned to deal with some household or farm emergency.
They eagerly extracted every ounce of news from the Tinker, who had travelled widely in the last three months: Suntoren, Sand City, the Fesskin Islands, Pillimon Graxi, the Tesseri desert, he seemed to have been everywhere except the Rimber valley. He was going to Misaloren soon, he said, and would pass word to Taccen that they were living in luxury and positively bored by their inactivity.
The boys thought of their cold little bedroom and of their days, which often involved rising in the dark to start work which stretched well into candle-lit evenings. So they smiled sweetly and said that they had they own message for Taccen. 'Did he realise that someone had made a simple mistake and that they had ended up at a penal colony for hardened criminals supervised by a demented scarecrow? They were enjoying the joke immensely, but perhaps he could arrange for their release: they would like to spend a year or two at home, while Taccen located the correct tutor for them.' The two men raised their glasses to salute the boys' riposte, and the four of them settled into a long convivial evening.
Later, seeing Idressin more talkative than usual, Berin asked him why he put on an act of looking stupid, particularly when Hasban was around, and to his surprise he received an answer.
"I'll tell you this time, Berin, because the Tinker could do with knowing how things stand here also. You two were sent here for two reasons, to stay somewhere quiet and out of the way for a while, and at the same time to learn a few things that might be useful to you later."
"Like basket-weaving?" Caldar asked, managing to inject a fine degree of incredulity into his tone.
Idressin ignored him and continued, "Taccen doesn't know Hasban well, and even before I reached the farm, from what I heard about him, I could see that he and his family could interfere with our plans. He might soon object to the cost of upkeep for you two, let alone for me. I know, Tinker, I know: you paid him well. But it takes a lot of money to support Hasban's way of life.
Anyway he might have invented a reason to send you boys back. He might have got rid of me. The simplest way to ensure things went right was to give him what he wanted. So from the start I've performed as a handyman who does all his difficult jobs for free: I act a bit simple, because to his mind only a simpleton would do all this extra work without some ulterior motive. I also dress like a beggar, because if I look poor, it makes Hasban believe he has a hold over me. Once the family had moved you out of the house, they felt comfortable with the whole situation. To their minds we’re under their control, we’re costing them nothing and we don’t obtrude into their stylish lives."
There was a serious expression on the Tinker's face as he asked, "And next year? How long will they be content?"
"That's the problem. Greedy people are never content. I think Hasban will be delighted in the spring when he finds he has a supply of good quality baskets to sell at no cost to himself." Idressin shook his head. "For all his avarice he’s blind to what he has. There are good willow beds up the river valley, run wild and overgrown from years of neglect. We're simply harvesting someone else's work.
However after that pleasant surprise has worn off and he's come to take the baskets for granted, I'll have to think again. The man will always represent a slight danger to us, Tinker, so the sooner you can resolve your present quest the better."
The Tinker looked thoughtful, but all attempts the boys made to extract more information from either of them that night failed. Instead the little party became wilder, as the drink flowed and the laughter grew louder. Idressin had them all in stitches with his portrayal of Hasban self-importantly inspecting his pigs while trying to keep his boots clean. He then graphically demonstrated to the Tinker how to scrub a wall and saw a log while actively wishing not to be doing so: he said gravely that he had learned this almost impossible feat from his two young friends and he would remain for ever in their debt.
The Tinker produced a wealth of stories from his travels, and the boys, as they became slightly drunk, began to devise more and more outlandish tasks for their tutor, culminating with his building a snow house which of course would turn out to be for himself to live in; they made no attempt to hide the heavy mo
ral message here. The laboured joke of all that worthy effort melting in the spring made them cry with laughter, while the two men looked on with affection.
Berin awoke some hours later with no recollection of how he got to bed. He heard, "Well, the year’s turned, Tinker, and a new one has begun. How long do we have?", and realised that it was Idressin's voice somewhere nearby, probably outside the little window by his bed. He was tired and still half drunk, so he lay and listened without making much sense of the words.
"Three years, perhaps four, I'm not sure. Even four years is too soon: they can’t be prepared in that time and the extra pressure on your group will be fierce. Added to that, I don’t know where it will happen yet. In Graxi last month I heard of a library in a Hoo Chaksa monastery near Shinshin Xibou with some very old manuscripts: there’s just a chance they’ll contain a more definitive version of the Amal Dahin prophecies. It’s a long way, but it’s best hope I have.”
“I wish you could communicate with me directly. It all takes so long.”
“You know I can’t do that while I’m working with Piro.”
A long sigh, then Idressin’s voice again. “And what else is troubling you?”
“Their safety, all four of them. You and your group can guard yourselves now, and the sooner you can start to shield them as well the better. Meruvai’s in Suntoren keeping an eye on Rasscu and Tariska. These two, well, even here they aren’t safe.”
“You said you could misdirect Kulkin’s sniffer.”
“That was easy. But they’re going to guess something’s wrong in the end and search the whole Lake.”
“Anyway, that’s not what I meant. There’s something deeper, isn’t there?”
There was no sound for such a long time that Berin was sure the pair had moved away. He was already dozing off when he heard the Tinker speak again. “I fear that Piro may not last even three years. He’ll have to move on, and if I’m not free to take his place, the Bridge may begin to fail.”
“Can you give him more help?”
“I already do what I can. But he knows why I have to keep coming back here.”
Then there was just silence….and sleep.
Next morning Idressin rowed the Tinker out to intercept the ferry and the day after that the cottage household resumed their normal routine. At the end of another month, the boys were really beginning to grasp their new craft. Neither of them matched their tutor's skill, but they could both make a dozen different kinds of basket well and quickly.
One day, as they worked, Idressin began to tell them a story. The language was old-fashioned, but the tale itself seemed familiar. It was a legend about the beginning of the world, one of many versions current among different peoples Idressin said: they had probably heard the Lake version in their childhood. It told of the first man and the first woman being born on an island in the middle of an immense ocean. They were perfect, as everything on the island was perfect. But the descendants of the first people offended the gods of the island and they were driven out. For endless years they had to travel the sea and then the barren land, until they came to the world in which men now lived. There they were allowed to settle and flourish. But the way back to the island was forbidden to them for ever.
The way Idressin told the story it was long, elaborate and full of detail. When he asked them the next day to repeat for him all they could remember, it took them a long time to patch together about half of it.
The following day he recounted another even longer legend about the Talismans of Power. They now knew that he would want to hear it again the day after, so they tried to listen intently. But as soon as their fingers and the flow of their work slowed down, the tutor shouted at them that they must continue weaving at full speed.
"My work doesn't slow down while I tell you these stories. No more should you slow down while you listen to them. You don't listen with your fingers, do you? Life's much too short only to do one thing at once."
They found this daily addition to their work very difficult to accommodate. They had been becoming rather proud of their growing skills and they secretly admired each of the nicely finished baskets which stood in the corner until Idressin took them off to store in a nearby barn. Now they were producing them misshapen again, and very slowly too. To make it worse, they were unable to remember more than half the details of any of the stories the tutor was recounting.
Idressin did not help or excuse them. Quite the contrary. "You’re so cumbersome, so slow," he would exclaim. "No, not your fingers, your attention. It plods along straight lines like a tired old horse in blinkers. Make it stretch and turn and come to life. Go faster."
He kept them at it relentlessly week after week, until they started to discover that they could in fact cope with both demands at once. Gradually their attention became lighter, more fluid, and they found that particular combination of alertness and relaxation of both head and body, which released each to attend to its own task. In the end they advanced to the point where hand and eye never slowed or hesitated, while they listened to or recalled the tutor's stories. They congratulated themselves on this fiendishly tricky accomplishment, which seemed to bring the bonus of a delightful clarity and peacefulness in its wake. Perhaps they should have guessed by now that even as they mastered this lesson, Idressin was about to change the rules.
The year was already well advanced, when spring suddenly arrived in Norleng. After the extreme harshness of the winter, although this had by all accounts been a mild one, it seemed as though nature exploded into life in a few days. Bird and tree, animal and flower, they all behaved as if they had to use every precious minute, and the mood was infectious. It acted upon the boys like a fever after the long confinement of the winter months, making them so excitable that Idressin declared a holiday. They were to come with him to deliver the latest batch of baskets to Torven, the nearest town. Hasban was as pleased as Idressin had predicted to have this new trade at no cost to himself, and he had offered his best wagon for the deliveries. After one journey over the muddy tracks, Idressin had chosen the farm's largest boat instead, and so it was to be today.
Torven was a disappointment. From the water it looked like a collection of half-finished shacks. Behind the waterfront it proved to be bigger and busier with several streets of solid stone buildings. But the boys had half-hoped for a smaller version of Misaloren, and under a light spring rain this was a poor and miserable place, peopled mostly by Ainu, squat and dull-faced. They cheered up when the dealer, a fair-haired Espar who had collected the baskets in his cart, invited them to come to his warehouse for refreshment. Idressin had other business in town and said he would see them back at the boat in a couple of hours.
When they entered the large timber building, they were puzzled to see part-made baskets and bundles of rods along one end. The middle-aged tradesman interpreted their curious stares correctly and said, "You're surprised that I'm buying baskets from you, when I make them myself, eh? Best stroke of luck I've had in years, that fellow Idressin turning up. And then fancy him finding a couple of young weavers like you who know what you're doing."
The boys exchanged glances and wisely kept silent in the hope their host would keep talking. The dealer found them a stool each and handed round cider and biscuits.
Perched on his own stool, he continued, "Yes, I had two good craftsmen working here with me, until last summer they heard about some new building work down Suntoren way where they were paying high wages. They were off next day, said they couldn’t stand another winter up here. Left me with just two Ainu apprentices who don't know a white rod from a brown one and don't care either. They'll learn in the end, but it takes years to train a good weaver, as you know, and these Ainu lads are not exactly the quickest, so I could see I was going to be in a real fix this spring. I'm the only proper basket-maker within fifty miles and I do a big trade when the fishing season and the farming start to pile up on top of my ordinary business."
He took a deep pull of his cider, and started again
. "Yes, lucky thing for me, the day Idressin came by. Said he was just doing odd jobs on Hasban's place before travelling on south, but he liked the look of my baskets. Liked to watch me working too, said he could tell a real craftsman when he saw one. He dropped in quite often and after hearing me moaning for a month or so about losing my weavers, he said he'd make some baskets for me. He'd never uttered a word before that about being a weaver. Said he was a bit rusty and he wasn't sure what state the willow beds were in up at Hasban's. But it turned out fine. Then to cap it all, he finds you two lads with good weaving skills. I can see you've had a fine teacher: these baskets are excellent. In fact looking at the style, I could've taught you myself. Where did you learn?"
The question came out of the blue. To his own surprise, Caldar heard himself answer easily, "Oh, we had a teacher on a place much like Hasban's. We're from Easterleng, near Misaloren."
“I should have realised you were clan,” the man said, looking at Berin. “Well, I’ve seen some good clan work. How’s life in Misaloren these days?”
As Caldar half expected, the mention of Easterleng was enough to change the line of conversation. The weaver had relatives in Misaloren and they spent a pleasant half hour exchanging information, before taking a wandering course around the tiny town back to the boat. The day was growing warmer as the clouds broke up and they waited for the tutor in good spirits, eager to tell him how their work had been praised.
Idressin returned with a large sack slung over his shoulder, full of bits and pieces he needed for jobs on the farm. Then he calmly sat down in the stern and asked the boys to 'sail the boat home'. They were aghast. Their only experience of sailing had been as passengers and they complained they didn't know where to start.
The Tears of Sisme Page 19