The Lens of the World Trilogy

by MacAvoy, R. A. ;

  My memory becomes sporadic, here. I recall the voices of the men urging the horses apart (one may not hold them by the headstall). I remember the sound of holes being pounded, to be wedged with steel blades. I saw the poles being slid across the ground at both sides and lifted at each end, to prevent the horses stepping back and hamstringing themselves. I must have taken my boots off, for there I was with my bare feet splayed out on the back of another horse, ready to step onto a bridge one half inch wide, strung over the points of knives.

  The nomads were shouting, some the traditional blessing on the dance, and some merely shouting. The blessing may have been ironical, but I took it for its worth. Arlin made no sound, which was perhaps the greatest blessing.

  I touched my right foot to the rope as close to the middle as the horse’s position would allow. I was surprised it was not more slick, and grateful, but as my mount swayed, I swayed and the game was almost finished as it started. The riders gave one single, rapacious shout, but both my feet were on the rope and I was standing. I was wobbling, but I stood.

  Such was the slack of the rope that my feet were only inches above the tallest of the blades, which were old sword blades, broken and kept particularly for this use. With all my attention on my balance, I did not at first notice that I was steadily sinking toward the earth as the rope stretched and the horses’ tackle shifted on their backs. I gave the breathy little whistle that the nomads use where we kiss our horses along, and although one of the animals chose not to hear me, the other pulled forward with a will and I was bounced clear off the suddenly taut leather line.

  The public roar with which I rose and then came down again on my feet and on the rope was almost lost to me under the roar of my heart. Usually in moments of emergency one’s emotions lag behind, making it possible for good habits to outstrip panic. This time, I was so terrified that my body’s sweat-chill started to shake my teeth.

  This was not what you taught me, and your teaching has been directed toward moments such as this. I stood quiet on the rope for the next few moments, recalling my times in the belly of the wolf, staring at nothing over the heads of the men and ponies, and then it was time to whistle the horses apart again. The lazy horse refused to move as the responsive horse stepped forward. The lazy horse’s hindquarters touched the pole and he twitched his back. The lazy horse was going to kill me.

  I was facing the responsive horse, and unsure how I could turn on the rope, but I backed, foot behind foot, until I began to climb upward toward his croup. I turned my head over my shoulder and almost lost myself, causing a cry of great excitement, and issued what I hoped was a very personal whistle to this single beast. I tried to make it threatening.

  The horse put its ears back and stepped stolidly forward three paces, where it stood at attention.

  The riders wanted more of me. They began to clap in time, chanting, “Dance, snowman, dance.” I was not sure what dance they expected; most I have learned are strongly three-dimensional and would not last long on a rope. There is, however, the walking dance “Minselye,” which closes every Yule celebration, and which every human who can walk can dance: forward three, back two, forward three, and stop. I gave them forward three, back two, forward one, and stop; and in my trembling concentration I might have missed the beat a few times, but I did not miss the rope.

  The horse by which I had mounted was no longer there, but the magician was. “Not so easy as it looks, snowman. Is it?”

  I did not look at him. “As I have never seen it done, I cannot be the judge of it. Tell me, elder, have I done the thing?”

  “You have,” he answered me, and once again my balance was precarious. Would Arlin now have to repeat all this, with me watching? He told me to back up, and I saw, amazed, that Arlin had been pressed into standing on the back of her horse, and her shoes were off, and it was to be both of us together.

  My fear turned to ice, and the roar that accompanied the sight of Arlin stepping onto the leather line had, for the first time, its own share of doubt in it. I heard one voice shout, “It will not hold them,” and another say, most remarkably, “It has never been done. It isn’t fair!”

  That a Red Whip should protest so, when they consider none but their own small troop to be human, and kindness to animals is unknown…

  The rope did stretch alarmingly, and as we sank toward the field of sharpened steel I met Arlin’s eyes. Although they are light eyes, like my own, they give a darker impression, and now they were forbidding and black. There was no fear in her face, nor yet warmth. She was taller than I, which was no advantage in this game, and she swayed disturbingly. My own body was hard pressed to make up for it.

  The total of our weights was enough to make the lazy horse start to give backward, shuffling his feet as though he hoped no one would notice the defalcation. As Arlin was still finding her balance on the line, I felt the sole of my boot give against a spearhead. I did not dare whistle the horses apart, for fear of dislodging my companion, but Arlin is observant, and Arlin can master a horse. The whistle she gave, while not loud, caused both horses to strain forward until the line snapped taut and popped us both in the air.

  I landed slightly overbalanced to my right, but Arlin landed slightly overbalanced to her right, and we were holding hands at the time, so our excess balanced out. We were standing as though at a formal dance, and if our steps forward and back were an attempt to maintain equilibrium, they might do for dance steps. The Naiish cheered for us, even the women in their wagons at the base of the hill. The rope, however, was doing its own cheering. It was squeaking like a mouse and I knew it would give soon under this treatment.

  Arlin’s face was calm and blank as the face of the statue of justice at the Sordaling School entry hall, and she said to me, “Back up to the horse behind you, Zhurrie. Stride him and point him down the hill.” With no other word she released my hand and slid backward along the trembling rope: left foot back, right, and then left again.

  I followed, though I kept my arm raised as though preparing for a couple’s return at dance, and when I felt the croup of the horse behind my heels, I leaped up, spun around, and came down sitting on the saddle. I broke my descent with both hands but it still hurt.

  Arlin had an edge upon me, so I grabbed the bit end of the reins, manhandled the little beast’s head around, and beat him forward with my heels. The Naiish who had the ends of the reins dragged a few steps and lost me, and I was plunging down the dry, turfy hill, attached to a leather line that took every horse and every man on foot at windpipe level.

  The first row of nomads were hit solid and went down. The second had time to turn broadside and it went even worse with them. The third row had not understood what was happening and we mowed them, and then the leather line broke, whipped, and spooked both our horses.

  Mine floundered, skidding into the herd of calves, where it did some damage and caused more panic. Arlin’s animal was bound for the assembled women, and she plowed them down regardless; Arlin is not sentimental regarding women. In another moment we were free of the band and running up the side of the next low hill of grass.

  Three little arrows raised clouds of dust between us, and later there was the sound of hooves pounding. The beats were regular and even familiar, but there were not many of them. Arlin’s horse was larger and better fed than my barrel-ribbed pony, but he had little difficulty keeping up.

  Both horses were wheezing when my ears reassured me that there were only a few riders following us. Arlin and I slowed enough to lean back and try to release the rope from our saddle-cantles, but our long trawl through the ponies of the nomads had jammed the leather into knots as solid as wood. I had out a little knife to cut myself free of the line when I heard a bellow of protest.

  “Cut the rope, snowman, and it is ruined. It’s already broken once. And it is my rope.” I saw it was the old magician trotting up to us, and the sweat-soaked horse he rode was my own daffodil-yellow gelding.

  I marveled, not so much at the sight o
f the Naiish rider, but at the emptiness of the plain that surrounded him. He had no companion at all, unless the yellow horse counted as one, or the black horse that he led, or the dead eagle strapped behind the withers of the black, shedding blood and feathers with each step the beast took. Ten yards from me he brought his mount to a stop—the four-square, attentive stop the nomads elicit from their mounts by body weight alone. The horse stood there, steaming, golden in the shine of its sweat: a much more impressive creature than usually it was.

  The magician extended his left hand slowly—the ritual hand with its fan of eagle feathers. He seemed to have no weapon except his own strong presence. “The horses you ride are also mine, but in that matter I think a simple trade will please all parties.”

  Arlin had been off to my right as the magician approached, but her horse had milled uneasily over the grass until by chance—seemingly by chance—it had come to stand between our visitor and me.

  The Naiish magician might have sensed that a rider of Arlin’s ability does not ride a horse that wanders by chance, or it might have been some expression in her usually guarded face which informed him, but he was not fooled by her maneuver. His seamy face split in a grin that showed excellent teeth, and at that moment he looked remarkably like the old drunken Zaquash who frequented the Yellow Coach.

  “I have seen stallions protecting mares,” the man said. “And I have even seen stallions protecting geldings. This is the first time I have seen a gelding standing in protection of a stallion.”

  Arlin did not move, and though I was behind her, I could see her response reflected in his, and I am sure she showed only the watchful inexpressiveness of the cardplayer she was. It was left to me to ask, “What do you mean by this talk of geldings and stallions?”

  “I recognize a gelding when I see one,” he answered in good humor, but out of Arlin’s sword range. This time the word he used was a variant of that used for castrated horses: a word particular to the Rayzhia language. “What other sort of man is so tall, so light-boned, so fine-faced… and so bleak of mood? I mean no insult by this; many men of consequence are geldings—servants of the mysteries rather than of lust.”

  How on earth to answer the man I had no idea. It was a shame he had perceived anything unusual about Arlin, but given the choice, it would be better for him to think her a eunuch than a woman. I pressed my horse up beside hers and looked at him squarely for a moment. “At the Yellow Coach Inn there is a man—or was—who comes in only on the worst of winter days, drinks himself sleepy, and falls asleep by the ashes with no thought of a blanket. I know, because I have often draped him in a blanket only to find it kicked off in the morning.”

  The magician extended his finger-feathers meditatively, while his eyes, silvered over with age, looked somewhere into the middle of my head. “You would do yourself a great damage to equate that man with myself. Just as I would do a great damage”—and his face split into a grin of brown but serviceable teeth—“to look at you and see a half-breed tavern functionary whose purpose in life is to translate for the fat merchants.”

  I felt we had made a great deal of progress in this one exchange, and I felt myself settle more relaxedly onto my horse. Arlin had been listening to us with one ear, most of her attention concentrated on the horizon behind the nomad. Arlin is not distractible.

  He noticed. “I came alone,” he said. “I forbade them to chase you.” The grin spread afresh. “They did not want to, truth to tell. One gains power and respect, forbidding people to do what they do not want to do.”

  “Why did you follow us, then? Not to be sure we got our property back?” Once again Arlin’s pony was shuffling between the magician’s pony and me. This was beginning to irritate me, so I moved my own mount up solidly against her. I hoped the man would miss this byplay. His face told me that he did not.

  “No, nor to get my own horses back, though mine are the better beasts. You are a story happening. You have called yourselves so. I am a keeper of stories and I want to know the rest of yours.”

  We were still staring at him, trying to understand his intent, when he slipped off my horse (just as though he were a natural man with legs and not a Naiish nomad at all), left both animals ground-tied, unbound the limp eagle carcass, and sat on the naked earth, cutting the skin from the bones of his sacred animal.

  Arlin and I sat beside our demure little fire, while on a round bump of a hill, some fifty yards off, our magician burned most of the carcass of the eagle on a fire of cow pats and brush. His fire stank up the night, and the bits of mineral powder and compounds that he sprinkled over the flames made a great show of color but did not ameliorate the odor.

  We, in our manner, were aiding in the disposal of the corpse. The breast-steaks and thigh-meat had been donated to our dinner. The magician insisted; it was not our sacred animal, after all, and no nomad appreciates waste. The bird tasted better than I had expected, but it had the texture of damp leather.

  “There is some phosphorus in that fire,” Arlin said in my ear. “Phosphorus and perhaps sulfur. I wonder where he gets it? Do they have mining, out here on the plains?”

  I shrugged. “He probably buys it in Warvala. From a ’pothecary, like anyone else.”

  Her glance at me was guarded, looking for something in my face that would tell her I was joking. Arlin had not been with me during that winter five years before. “You really recognize him? And he recognizes you? That being the case, I am surprised we were able to put over our poetic drama back there.”

  At this moment I felt more akin to the bird-burner on the hill than to Arlin. “Why be surprised? We were not offering lies to him. The man who sleeps the blizzard away on warm tiles with warm wine in his gut is the magician: a real leader of the most really deadly people on this earth. That I know of.

  “And I am Zhurrie the tavern bouncer, translator, mercantile mediator of Warvala. (I miss the place, do you know? Perhaps it is merely the effect of seeing a familiar face.) And I am also Nazhuret…”

  I shut my mouth on all the possible ways I could continue that sentence. I had said it once that day, and once was too much. So I continued. “Think of Powl, who at court is the Earl of Daraln, adviser to the king and to the king’s father.

  “And was also to my own father. But who as P. Inpres has written more articles for our own Royal Academy of Sciences or that of Lowcanton. And as simply Powl—”

  Arlin put her finger in front of my mouth, which was one step more polite than plugging it altogether. “Enough, you… you snowman. I have the message that truth is not what it seems, or rather, that it is that and more besides. But I tell you that at no time, blizzard or sunshine, withindoors or without, am I any kind of gelding.”

  I looked past the fire at her gleaming eyes and realized three things: Arlin had recovered from her pain and her tragedy, I had recovered from my arm wound, and the magician had finished his oblation and was proceeding down the hill toward us, making as much noise as a mortal man.

  I took the opportunity to kiss the fingertip within my reach and steal one private glance. “What a shame that would be,” I whispered over the fire.

  “Two days from now these plains will become ridges, and then these ridges will become mountains, and it is a good thing we do not pass through them any later in the year,” said the magician, riding between us. “The winds are terrible in the autumn, and in the winter, the snow is worse. And after the mountains we will descend into warmer country, where the sweat sits on your forehead even in winter. And then we will rise again toward the fortress.

  “That is, if no one has killed you by then.”

  “What if we run into another of your… of the Naiish tribes?” asked Arlin. “You would be in every bit as much danger as we.”

  The magician laughed. “More, fellow. But we will not. There are no horsepeople within a hundred miles of us.”

  As we stared at him uncertainly, he continued. “Believe me. I would know if there were. My ear can read the ground as well as anyo
ne’s.”

  You neglected to tell us such an ability exists, my dear Powl, but I believed the man. Considering the hatred the Red Whips feel for one another’s tribes, they must have some means of mutual avoidance, or they would all be dead. I decided to watch him do it.

  “Magician,” I asked, “when you describe the wine country—the lowland beyond the mountains, am I to understand you dislike the place and the climate?”

  The magician chuckled. “Ah no, Nazhuret. I find it very sweet. You can fall asleep in the middle of a field and wake up rested. You can pop fruit right into your mouth.” His eye, as he met my gaze, was cloudy, but his sincerity was clear. “But I do not own any of that land, do I? And as Naiish, I own the entire grassland. Still, I’d rather have a vineyard.” The old magician laughed like a little boy.

  He played with the kite he had built of twigs and eagle skin. The salty skin, though dry and translucent now, still gave off an odor. Through the next few days he worked on the balance of the thing, and weighted the tail with pebbles, until it was flight-worthy and sailed out over us in the steady wind of the plains. I didn’t think the horses would ever become used to it.

  It was sometime that day or the next that the magician ceased calling me by the epithet “snowman” entirely. Arlin took up the practice instead.

  Travel across the plains in summer took on some of the aspects of contemplative discipline. More specifically, it was like staring at the empty wall when one was ill; all things were bright, confused, and far away. There was no rest to be had, either under the hard stars or the vengeful sun. Arlin’s skin turned a color somewhere between brick and leather. My bothersome complexion merely burned, until the smell of my own cooking skin drowned out all other odors for me. The magician gave me ajar of some sort of mud with which I covered my face and forearms. It didn’t stink, at least not after it had dried, but I must have looked like something dug unwisely out of the ground. The claypack made me very conscious of my moods, as it yanked against the expressions of my face, and it did nothing to keep the broiled skin from splitting over my knuckles and wrists, but it did make it possible for me to cross the width of the grasslands.