The Lens of the World Trilogy

by MacAvoy, R. A. ;

  I glanced out the hole in the shrubbery, small and at ground level, and thought no badger den was less obvious. By the sounds she made and the bitter smell of leaf juice in the air I knew she had destroyed the leaf in her hands.

  “I miss her,” said Arlin. “I miss Sabia very much. For a few days the loss of the baby overwhelmed that, but I had Sabia with me for fourteen years.”

  “She was a good horse,” I said, though I did not have Arlin’s educated appreciation for quality in the beasts.

  “She was a valuable horse, when I had nothing else valuable. Three times I sold her, but I always got her back.”

  I almost asked Arlin whether “got her back” meant the same as “bought her back,” but I decided if Arlin stole her own horse it was years ago and she was in no mood to be teased.

  Still, I cannot hide my thoughts from her, even under a canopy of green and pink. “Once I stole her back, and once I bought her back—you remember that time, for I returned in time to find you stuck between the king’s temper and Powl’s obstinacy.”

  “… In time to save the king, you mean.”

  She shrugged, her flat shoulder blades against the ground. “To save a king and kill a duke. Whatever. The other time I sold her I was honest about it, but she stole herself, and came to me bloody-nosed, dragging a chain cavesson. I heard later that she broke the buyer’s head for him.”

  Arlin spoke with very little sympathy for the man, and she added, “I should have had her bred. Now there’s nothing to remember.”

  I looked at my paramour, stretched out in all her length on the carpet, skin white against the dark wool shirt which was all she wore, and I thought of her father. “No matter, Arlin. Children are not much like their parents, anyway.”

  Arlin peered at me appraisingly with her cloudy gray eyes, but she let me have the last word.

  There are three problems that dominate life for the homeless: staying warm, staying dry, and staying fed. The season took care of the first and the second, but it was up to me to supply the victuals.

  First I raided the oratory garden—the garden I myself had planted and kept. It was an awkward time of year for vegetables, for the greenstuffs had already bolted in the heat and the filling crops of later summer—horsebeans, roots, and all the sundry grains—had not properly headed yet. I found that a large number of the parsnips and turnips I had planted were already taken out half-sized, and so I sneaked into the old pantry to dip into the grain stores.

  Here had been further depredation, more than one would expect, considering that only five people besides ourselves had been staying in the oratory. I heard voices beyond the wooden door, and they were very merry. Peeking through the lock-hole, I found four of our five seated around the refectory table, with an assortment of jugs and bottles scattered about. I did not need to put my nose to the hole to scent raw wine and beer.

  This gave me to think. We had lived in the oratory as beggars among beggars since the first one knocked on our door in April and found us scrubbing old mildew from the windows. At least we had announced the place to be a haven given by the king to the homeless (true enough as far as that went). We had lived soberly in all, since neither Arlin nor I have a great lust after food and we were usually cooking. And since there were always more mouths than anticipated, and we were conscious that the sacks of provision which followed us from court to the borders of Norwess were charity. One had better not become too used to living on charity.

  The fact that our “fellows” had squandered their little capital within two days after our departure meant to me that we had acted more the part of the landlord than we had thought, and that these others felt no stake in the future of the place.

  Well, why should they? Beggars were mobile by nature; their lives had taught them to take and go. For them this sour beer might be the equivalent of old wine in crystal.

  I excused them, but still I was angry, and so I took bags of flour and of broken oats, and sneaked out again to snare a rabbit. Since I hate snaring rabbits, I was in a worse mood than ever when I splashed back to our shelter.

  I found Arlin engaged in a short sword dance, and I watched as I skinned the animal. I cannot dance with Arlin’s grace, though I have danced with Arlin often enough. After this exercise, she had a faint glaze of sweat over her face, which would not be the case with Arlin in good health. I made a small, almost invisible fire, grilled the meat, and made oatcakes while she sat in her open, empty silence: what I call the belly of the wolf. I was determined not to let her know I had been upset by my visit to our house, and so I hummed and mumbled in my work.

  I do talk to myself.

  The first thing Arlin said to me was “What’s wrong, Zhurrie? Have they made trash of the place already?”

  My expression made her laugh, which was an unexpected benefit, and she added, “Did they sell all the grain barrels already?”

  “Just the grain out of them,” I answered. “And the parsnips and turnips.”

  She widened one eye at that, and seemed to be my cynical old Arlin again. “You had to have expected it, my true knight. With the prior owners vanished without word, they would be waiting by the day for official dispossession. They have to make the most of the time they’ve got.”

  I thought about that while I cut up the rabbit, which was no fat baby and would have done better with steel than teeth to cut the bites. “I never told them the place was ours. Did you?”

  Her smile was condescending. “No. But the usual beggar does not send letters to King Rudof two or three times a season.”

  “I handled that very inconspicuously,” I began, but she cut me off with the words “Or get them from the king. By very conspicuous special courier.”

  She was looking at the rabbit with no more enthusiasm than I had shown. “One more wolfish feast. Until these two years, I never would have believed I would look fondly upon a diet of oatcakes and brown bread.” We each took a bite and it was a while before we could speak again.

  “I shall be constipated, on top of all my other problems,” Arlin stated, and she lay back under the canopy (she was too tall to be comfortable sitting up) and dropped bits of food into her mouth.

  Now the light was slanting to late afternoon, and the shadows of the big maple leaves were black as her hair against Arlin’s pale face. I said, “You know, it’s when you are disgusted about something that your upbringing comes out. You sounded then the true noblewoman. Very strange, in these circumstances.”

  She turned her eyes, not her face, to me. “Yes, My Lord Duke,” she said.

  This was the expected retaliation. “I was never brought up as a noble. You know that.”

  Arlin leaned up on one elbow and pointed at me. “You…” Whatever argument she had in mind she gave up, or something more important intervened among her thoughts.

  “Norwess,” she said instead. “You can’t wait longer. You have to go there.”

  For a moment I was puzzled, for we were in the old dukedom of Norwess. “You mean the honor itself? God, woman, what business have I in that house? What could be gained?”

  Arlin sat up again, crouching as dust and dry leaves fell onto her head. “You have three choices, Nazhuret, son of Eydl of Norwess. You can allow yourself to die, you can live as a beast for the rest of your life, or you can confront the people who want your death.”

  Arlin’s phrasing revealed there had been a lot of thought before she spoke those words. Her tone hinted prophecy. I felt helpless as a rabbit myself, when Arlin turned prophet. “We don’t know it’s the young duke,” I said. “Norwess is cut up like a big pie.”

  Arlin lay down again, chewing tough meat but still looking very like a prophet. “Where Leoue goes, the rest will follow,” she said.

  That night, as we huddled together against the wet, I dreamed of the Duke of Norwess’s son, Timet. He rode by me on a tall black war-horse, which served to dwarf him and flush all the color from his pale skin. I ran along beside, hoping to catch his eye: hoping for recog
nition. Though I was too shy to shout it out, I was closely related to Tim o’ Norwess. It was an unpleasant dream, for the man kept glowering ahead of him, black with the knowledge that he had never had the opportunity to exist. His gear was blue and gold: Norwess’s colors. I wore clothes of no particular color, of course. I ran barefoot and he never knew me.

  This was not the first time I had had this particular dream, but as I dreamed it (knowing all the while it was a dream and to be endured) I realized I was destined to repeat it on many other nights. Through my life, perhaps.

  I woke up to Arlin’s sleepy protests; I was clutching her too hard. I asked her if she would prefer to call me a normal name such as Tim, and she replied that she would not.

  It was my idea to leave Arlin in that island nest while I went on the errand alone. This was not her idea, and just as well, for I get into trouble explaining things. Though I like to talk (as you know well, Powl) and like to listen to others talking, I am never sure what they mean when they use the same words I use. Arlin, having no love for jabber, knows how to use the language as a pry-bar.

  Norwess is mountainous; without too much exaggeration, one might say it is one enormous, jagged mountain. Our journey from the foothills to the palace itself took three days of hiking, and though Arlin had not recovered entirely from the miscarriage, she was not slowing us down.

  We ate what we had packed, except the once when I was able to exchange chopping at a tree for a hot supper. That work humbled me, for I wasn’t used to the air of the altitude—some nine thousand feet—and I felt my heart drum against my ribs. The local folk of Norwess think it the greatest hilarity to watch a visitor collapse, gaping like a fish. Perhaps if my life had not taken such an unexpected downward turn, my sense of humor would be the same. I like to think not.

  The high waters of the duchy are more foreign than the air: black round lakes too deep to gauge, and rapacious streams floored in stone that fling down to the South, where they feed Vestinglon, or east, where exhaustion and level countryside turn them into the sweet waters of Ekesh. When I put my hand into one of the streams to fill our waterskin, the touch on skin was much like the sting of the dry-weather sparks that run from one’s hand to a metal doorknob. This, however, may be sheer coincidence or the inexactitude of my human perception. I have heard you deny any connection between the nature of sparks and of cold water. If I had remained Timet of Norwess, these daunting lakes and streams would be normal waters to me.

  Please believe that I keep returning to this “Timet” ghost not because I grieve for a life denied me, but because I fear it. At the time of my narration, it appeared that the very memory of Timet, son of Eydl of Norwess, was enough to doom Arlin and me both.

  As Vestinglon is the heart of Velonya, so Norwess is its ancient bulwark and protection. From Norwess comes the tall, fair, lean-faced human stock we think of as true Velonyan, though Velonya possesses more folk as nondescript as I than it does heroes of the old stamp. In Norwess I felt more than ever that I was a dwarf who crawled out from under the stones of the earth—there were appropriate stones everywhere. But even in these high conifer forests, I noticed more people with Arlin’s black hair than my own dandelion shade. (I have heard you say that blonds are an anomaly everywhere and inclined to be weak-eyed. But then, you are not a blond.)

  When we were some five miles from the ducal honor, the road passed the highest point of our travels, and some man of wealth (perhaps Eydl, my father) had cleared a place and commissioned a stone table and benches, too heavy for thieves to carry away. Here we sat in a high, sunny wind, looking out over every quadrant of the compass.

  I cut for my weary lady the last of our biscuits and cheese. I remember that the cheese had a coat of mold and an underjacket of shining grease. “There,” I said, “behind you. That broad blue horizon is the North Sea.” Arlin turned to look. Even from the mountain heights we could see a metallic sparkle of light from the water. The movement of the glitter implied that the sea was rough. “And over your right shoulder, that dark line like a cloud is the Great West Ocean. We can see both from here. And down the slope behind you amid the green is a flash of white limestone from one of the towers of Palace Norwess. Leoue, I mean.”

  Arlin has a special guarded expression (one of many) which I have learned means she is thinking about me. “So,” she said, smearing the cheese onto the dry biscuits, fragmenting the biscuits in the process, “you did come here before. When I was with Powl.”

  “I wandered this far,” I admitted. The white flashes of limestone disappeared as the wind died among the trees, and then reappeared.

  “Wandered.” She repeated the word without expression and ate the sticky mess she had created. Cold wind whipped her short black hair over her face. “Did you also wander as far as the palace, then?”

  I admitted it. “I begged a meal. I cleaned stalls and slept in the home farm byre.”

  Arlin smiled her wolfish smile. “Don’t apologize, Zhurrie. Anyone is interested in the place he is born. More so if he was ripped away early. It has to hurt.”

  I had to look away. I watched the white glow of limestone wink in and out. The bright glitter of water, winking. “It hurts,” I said.

  I saw my father and my mother once, Powl. Long after they were dead. I don’t know if I ever told you about that. I was very sick at the time, and how can I prove the experience was real? Nevertheless, I saw them.

  Arlin’s beautiful, lean hero’s face looked more wolfish, more dangerous. “At any time you can have it back. All of Norwess. I will get it for you, Nazhuret.”

  My wistfulness dissolved into laughter, but not because I didn’t believe she could do it. “No,” I said. “I don’t want Norwess. You know I don’t. It just hurts.”

  I don’t think we said anything more until we came to the gates of the palace.

  You, Powl Inpres, Earl of Daraln, must have seen Norwess many times, climbing the long slope in dry air with your ears popping. This was only my second sight of the place (second within adult recall, of course) and I had expected to find that memory had added grandeur. Memory had not.

  The endless whiteness of it was the most impressive thing, for the only available stone was the native limestone, and though the structure had grown and rambled through many builders and many generations—turning from fortress to castle to manor to palace as civilization turned around it—it had maintained this unity of color. Against the backdrop of bare mountains, scarcely darker than its walls, it seemed a work of nature as much as a work of man.

  It had hundreds of windows: tall ones, many-paned, slotted ones; without panes, arched ones rimmed in colored glass; and at the western face bottom, very ordinary ones with bad glazing and iron grilles. (These last I knew from the time I had begged breakfast in the scullery.) I could keep myself in steady work for years, maintaining the windows of my father’s palace, if the owner would hire me.

  The park of Leoue Palace is in two sections, the larger filling the valley that leads up to the gate and the smaller, scarcely two miles on a side, enclosed by a wall some eight feet high which shone with the same brightness as the house itself. Arlin and I approached the gate through the wood, which was largely conifer and riddled with large, protruding stones. The air seemed empty, lacking the incense I expected out of the evergreens, but that might have been only my unaccustomed nose.

  The gate itself was of iron, higher than the level of the stones and very ornate. It was guarded by a soldier equally ornate, in the black of Leoue with Leoue’s gold braid. He leaned against the round-arched cubby in the wall that was his only shelter, one hand on the length of a very archaic halberd.

  I wondered if the man had any more reasonable weapon with which to face intruders. I did not think he could give us much trouble, even with Arlin weakened by travail and travel. But it seemed we could not win anything but ill feeling by overpowering the household defenses, so we decided to come in a good thirty yards from the gate, climbing over the wall.

  Now
here were there trees close enough to help in the endeavor, but I stood on Arlin’s shoulders, lay myself along the top, and pulled her up after me.

  I had not before seen this aspect of the garden. Someone, either Duke Leoue or my father or their wives perhaps, was of the school which likes to make plants look like animals. The juniper bushes that surrounded us were carved into hedgehogs, roe deer, standing rabbits, and other brutes less recognizable, and the winding paths were lined with pillars of ivy on wire, each of which was topped by a flock of vegetable birds. Through this fantasy slipped a bright small stream, which looked like nothing but itself, yet where it widened into a pond, I glimpsed a number of large goldfish with diaphanous fins, looking like orange flowers.

  Arlin took me by the elbow and pulled me into the shrubbery, for I was becoming dazed by the place. “I prefer an honest rosebush myself,” she said, and added, “You’re sunburned. Things up here are different, even the sun. Be careful.”

  I rubbed my eyes to displace the oddities I had seen and reminded Arlin that I am always sunburned.

  She got to see her rosebushes as we stole from garden to garden, and I got to see more ponds and fishes. The maze we avoided entirely, and we came to the main door over a terrace of white limestone and black slate, feeling dwarfed by all the magnificence and very dusty.

  A footman in black and gold came out of the small, plain door hidden among the pillars. He took Arlin by the upper arm, or thought he had done so, and asked what we meant by our presence. He was left staring at his open hand, wondering why it clutched nothing.

  Arlin looked blandly across at the man in the way she has when deciding which part of an opponent should be broken first. I announced myself to be Nazhuret of Sordaling, and I requested to be brought before the duke.

  The footman, like most footmen, was very tall. He began to grin at my impudence, and he raised his hand to grab again. Before he could touch me, I used my last peaceful weapon, which is the name of the king.