by Lynn Abbey
“But it’s not, Grandfather—it’s not. The questions they asked—it didn’t matter what the other boy said, because no matter what they did to me, I didn’t know what they wanted to know. I told them your stories—The other boy told them. But they weren’t what Strangle wanted. He asked questions in languages I didn’t know. Cauvin won’t know them either, but he told Strangle he was your heir. Grandfather—he lied to them … He’s made himself one of them, but he lied, too. And when Strangle asks those questions, he won’t be able to answer them. He doesn’t even understand Imperial. Strangle will hurt—” No, that wasn’t the truth. “Strangle will kill him. Strangle and Leorin will kill Cauvin!
“You lied to me! You lied! You said nothing was wrong, that everything would be all right. It’s not. It’s not—!”
“That’s enough!” Grandfather declared. “Give me my staff now.” He pulled the blackwood out of Bec’s hands. “You were in no danger of being eaten. That man you met in the tunnels—and he is a man, no monster. That man is the greatest mage in Sanctuary and, perhaps, the entire world. His name is Enas Yorl and, as Vashanka will be my judge, I thought he’d escaped this city years ago. But my loss—his loss—is Sanctuary’s gain. Do you know the empty corner between here and the Crossing?”
“Batty Dol says it’s haunted. Momma says it’s not, but she won’t let me play there.”
“I think both are right. That’s the corner where Enas Yorl’s house stood, and if he’s still in Sanctuary, then his house is, too—sometimes. And it would seem, as well, that he still pays heed to what happens to his neighbors—”
Bec saw hope. “Does that mean he’s killed Strangle and Leorin, crushed the Hand, and gotten Cauvin safe away?”
Grandfather took Bec’s hand in his own. Being touched by him was as bad as being touched by that monster-magician, but Bec held his breath and didn’t have to run away.
“I don’t know, Bec, but if I believe you—and I know I can—then Soldt and Enas Yorl were both watching out for you and Cauvin. They saved you, with Cauvin’s help—”
Bec pulled his hand away. “That’s not good enough, Grandfather. Can’t we do something?”
“A dying old man and a boy short of his full growth? No, Bec, there’s nothing we can do except wait … and pray. Have you prayed?”
“I prayed to Shipri on the way home.” Bec lowered his eyes, ashamed to be his mother’s son and admit that he prayed to a Wrigglie goddess.
“Then pray to Shipri again. Pray to them all. I prayed to my god when I knew I was dying. He sent me Cauvin. If he ever decides to claim it, your brother has everything that’s mine to give, including my luck. And except for leaving Sanctuary, I’ve been a very lucky man—though I was an old and dying man before I understood—”
“Bec!” The voice was Momma’s, and she was below the loft. “Becvar! I’m making breakfast. Fresh eggs and all the rashers of bacon you can eat!”
Bec’s mouth watered. He glanced longingly at the hole in the floor. The ladder creaked—
“Furzy feathers! Momma! Don’t!”
Momma didn’t like spiders. If she got caught by the webs Bec had battled, she’d fall for sure. But her head and shoulders grew through the hole, no trouble at all.
“Come down from here. It’s all—” Momma said, then she noticed Grandfather sitting up with his staff raised beside him. In her best Imperial, she said, “Lord Torchholder. You’re—You’re—What can I do for you, Lord Torchholder?”
“You can bring your son’s breakfast to him when it’s ready. He will be eating it here with me.”
“Yes, my lord. The eggs are fresh, my lord, and the bacon’s the best we can afford, but our bread’s gone stale, and we have no wine that’s worthy of a lord.”
“Don’t worry yourself, mistress; I shall not be eating. I’ve eaten enough for one lifetime. Now, hurry, mistress, he’s a boy, and he’s hungry!”
Bec had never seen his mother overwhelmed before. She begged Grandfather to taste her eggs and bacon, or maybe her porridge. It was Momma’s life wish, she said—her late father’s life wish—to serve a great lord a meal from her table. Grandfather relented and asked for a single egg, boiled in water.
“An honor, my lord. The honor of my life,” Momma said on her way down the ladder. “I shall be forever grateful.”
Once she was gone, Bec scampered over to the hole, looking for spiderwebs.
“What are you doing?” Grandfather asked.
“There were spiderwebs when I came up the ladder.” He stirred his arm in the empty gap. “Sticky, stinging spiderwebs. Momma hates spiders. She’s afraid of them. Where’d they go?”
“Your Momma hadn’t been consorting with the Bloody Hand of Dyareela.”
Bec stiffened. “I did not. I’m not old enough to consort!”
“But you had been within their sphere, and they had both tried and tempted you. The warding detected that.”
“Warding?” Bec folded his arm close against his belly. Bilibot told tales about warding in winter, and Eprazian claimed he could cast a warding spell, though he never had. “Would I … ?”
Grandfather nodded.
“Why can’t I feel it anymore?”
“Because you are a very brave young man. We wouldn’t be here right now if I’d had the wit to set wards like that before the storm.”
“Is it still there?”
“Very definitely. When Soldt and your brother return, we shall likely hear some very rude language.”
Bec stared at the floor below. “Unless he succumbed.” Grandfather didn’t reply. Bec waited a few moments before asking: “Are you dying, Grandfather?”
“I’m past dying, boy. I should have died yesterday. I would have—if your brother had listened to my directions and gone to the palace instead of visiting his ladylove. Now, I could say that was bad luck all around, or I can count myself fortunate to have one last breakfast with you, because, sitting here, I realize that I’ve forgotten to tell you a story. It’s a very important story, especially if our prayers aren’t answered.
“I need to tell you the story of a man who waited—”
Bec wasn’t interested in a story. “If you die, what happens to the warding?”
“It will last a little while.”
“And then? What happens to Momma and Poppa and me if our prayers aren’t answered?”
“They will be—You must have faith if you expect the gods to answer your prayers. Cauvin will know how to set wards. He’ll struggle at first. The knowledge won’t come naturally to him—He’ll need your help. Imagine I showed you a letter written in Old High Yenized. Could you copy it? Not read it or write a reply, only copy it, letter for letter, word for word?”
Bec nodded. “Can you teach me how to copy wards, Grandfather?”
“No, but I tell you what—when I’m gone, you can have my staff.”
“What if Cauvin doesn’t come back?”
Grandfather closed his eyes. He rubbed the wrinkles between his eyebrows and groaned a little. When he reopened his eyes they were noticeably dimmer. Patting the straw beside him, Grandfather said, “Come, Bec. Sit beside me. Let me tell you the story—we haven’t much time.”
With a groan of his own, Bec dragged his feet to the pallet. “If you say so, Grandfather.”
“If only your brother felt the same way. The man I’m going to tell you about was named Hakiem—”
“Was? He’s dead?”
“I should think so. He was some years older than I, and I’ve become the oldest man I know not cursed with eternal life. But perhaps he still sits comfortably in a Beysib garden. The last time I saw him—which I did not know would be the last time—he said the climate there was better suited to a man’s declining years.”
“Beysib? Hakiem was a fish?”
“Not at all. Hakiem was born in Sanctuary, just like you. We were very much alike, Hakiem and I, though I did not realize that for many years, each men of fixed desires whose lives wandered far from the courses
we’d charted in our youths. Of course, my desire was to build a great temple for my god atop Graystorm Mountain overlooking the Imperial city. Hakiem’s desire was to get drunk as often as mortally possible and as cheaply …”
Some men could command respect dressed in nothing but fishnet and rags. Other men might dress themselves in the finest silks, visit the most skilled barbers, but wind up looking no better than a man dressed in fishnet and rags. Hakiem was one of the latter such men.
He was short of spine, of legs, and of arms; paunchy and swaybacked, cursed with a fickle beard and a head of hair that was neither bald nor full, straight nor curled, black nor gray. The gods had cheated him out of a second eyebrow; he suffered beneath a single bushy ridge that spanned his entire face and kept his eyes forever in shadow. His lower lip was pendulous, his teeth were crooked and the color of ancient ivory. His feet were splayed like a duck’s and he waddled when he walked.
Not surprisingly, Hakiem pursued a sedentary life, preferably in the corner chair at a corner table with a good view of the commons—and all the doors—of a lively tavern where the wine was sweet enough to drink on an empty stomach. His favorite tavern, an establishment which met each of his demands with room to spare, was the Vulgar Unicorn, deep in the Maze. Unfortunately for Hakiem, the Unicorn’s keepers would not let him sit in his favorite chair unless he bought a mug of wine to sip while he sat.
This uncompromising policy meant that before Hakiem could settle in for the day’s main activity—getting drunk on no more than two mugs of wine—he needed to procure a small handful of copper padpols, or padpools as the little copper coins were known in those days. He could have gone to work for any number of merchants or artisans; Hakiem was literate in Sanctuary’s two main tongues; Rankan and Ilsigi, and had a keen head for numbers, especially the numbers of profit. But, as he would explain to anyone who asked, working for someone else’s establishment inevitably led to expectations and disappointment; and working for himself would have been worse.
Hakiem could have gone begging, except begging in Sanctuary meant giving away two coins for every three collected: one to whoever owned the spot where the beggar begged and the second to Moruth, the self-styled beggar king from Downwind. Hakiem knew the cut of Moruth’s sails well enough to steer clear of him. Besides, though less than handsome, Hakiem wasn’t disfigured, deformed, or simpleminded; and he had too much pride, too little patience for sitting behind an empty cup begging strangers to drop a coin in.
He chose a more active path to his daily encounter with the Unicorn’s wine. Each morning, well after dawn, Hakiem would hie himself to wherever the largest crowds of Sanctuary were apt to congregate, settle his rump on the cushion he invariably carried under the folds of his wrinkled robe, and proclaim:
“Stories for the day. Stories of lovers. Stories of heroes. Stories for children, for women, and men. Histories and fantasies. Epical or poetical. Pay what you please—satisfaction guaranteed!”
Standing in the shadows of a rope-maker’s stall, Molin Torchholder watched and listened as Sanctuary’s only successful storyteller gathered his small crowd. Hakiem baited his audience with snippets from his best-known tales: the wedding of Ils and Shipri or the wedding of Savankala and Sabellia; the history of the world and the history of Sanctuary; the rise and fall of Jubal and his hawkmasks, the rise and devoutly hoped for fall of Tempus and the Stepsons. The pudgy little man got his audience vying against itself—a padpol for my favorite story; no, two padpols for mine; three, then four, until, finally, when Hakiem stood to earn seven padpols—more than enough for his daily libations at the Unicorn—for whichever story he told, he began the tale of the old fisherman and the giant crab for six padpols, divvied among his audience.
The tale of the fisherman’s quest was a good story, a true one, and a short one. Molin had scarcely begun to sweat within his woolen robes when the audience dispersed. Hakiem collected his cushion and his coins. He began the waddle from the wharf where he’d told the story to the Unicorn.
Molin fell in step beside the storyteller.
“My Lord Archpriest! To what do I owe the honor of your august presence?” Hakiem bowed with a flourish that was more insolence than honor.
“Lord Molin will be sufficient. I would like to buy you a mug of the finest wine the Vulgar Unicorn can offer a thirsty man. I have a business proposition to discuss with you.”
“If you’re buying, then the finest wine can found on the Street of Red Lanterns—”
“But the houses are no place for men like ourselves to discuss business.”
“You wish to have business with me?” The storyteller’s mockery became concern. “At the Unicorn?”
“Stranger things have happened at the Unicorn. Will you accept my offer?”
“Depends on what it is, Lord Molin,” the storyteller said, but he led the way to the Maze tavern.
Molin ordered a table jug of the Unicorn’s best—and only—vintage. He paid for it with Imperial silver and left the change—a heap of Ilsigi padpools—on the table. He offered a toast—“May Anen see you home by starlight!” that brought a smile to the storyteller’s lips.
The wine was Ilsigi; no Rankan god would claim it, though it was not unpleasant: a bit harsh, a bit rebellious—a good match for salt-sea air or a raw, winter’s night. Molin topped off his mug before he began the discussion.
“I have been watching you, Hakiem, since I arrived in Sanctuary—”
The single eyebrow became a bushy, worried arch, which Molin ignored.
“I have seen how the tales you tell spread through the city until they become the truths that everyone believes. I’ve seen, too, how you never tell a fully tragic tale, but always leave a glimmer of hope and justice for the ending. That, too, spreads through Sanctuary.”
Hakiem fussed with his empty mug, “The storyteller’s art—”
“Is optimism.” Molin reached across the table to replenish the storyteller’s wine. “And you are a master.” He tipped his mug. “Of storytelling and performance. Though your listeners do not seem to realize it, they rarely hear the stories they request. They hear the stories you wish to tell. Do they not?”
“The art is more than telling, it’s listening. I hear what they want to hear; I tell them what needs to be told.”
“Exactly!” Molin crowed. This was going better than he’d dared hope. “What the denizens of this gods-forsaken city need to hear. And I propose to give you a stipend—two minted-in-Ranke soldats each week—and two more right now in earnest, if you will tell specific stories to Sanctuary’s denizens.” He pushed four soldats across the table.
Hakiem puffed up his plump, pigeon breast. His cheeks bulged, and his knuckles were white as he pushed himself away from the table—away from a scarcely touched mug of wine.
“Keep your Rankan money,” he snarled. “It can’t buy me.”
Molin’s personal instinct was to let the storyteller go, but it wasn’t personal need that brought him to the table. He pinched the tender spot on the bridge of his nose to lessen the throbbing pain that conversations in the local Ilsigi dialect so often produced. “I did not mean to insult you, Hakiem,” he said with more difficulty than the storyteller could imagine. “Please, sit down. Let me try again. I’ve come to you because, of all the men I’ve met in Sanctuary, you’re the only one who—I think—would choose to remain here, had you the opportunity to live somewhere else. You love this city. I’m not going to ask you to tell stories glorifying me, my prince, or my Empire.”
The storyteller scooted his chair close to the table and took a swig from his mug. “Very well, I’m listening. If you don’t want Imperial pandering—what stories, exactly, do you want me to tell?”
“I’ll leave that up to you, of course.”
Hakiem leapt to his feet. “I will not be made a fool of!”
“Then sit down,” Molin hissed.
He was a priest of Vashanka. He’d commanded armies in the north and he could command a simple story
teller without raising his voice or leaving his chair. Hakiem’s rump hit wood with an audible thump!
“I am not interested in the particulars of your stories—well told and entertaining though they may be. I’m interested in the effect of your stories over time. Let it also be said that when I commission a master, I do not waste his time or mine telling him how to apply his craft. I care only for the result: the propagation of needful stories throughout Sanctuary.”
Molin checked the two mugs on the table and found that his own was lower. He topped it off and continued—
“As an archpriest of Vashanka I am not only a priest of some stature, but also a commander of the Imperial army and a member of the Imperial court. Through my wife and by my own initiative I have acquired considerable property—none of which, I might add—lies in Sanctuary. As result of my far-flung interests, I stand at the confluence of communications flowing through the Empire and sometimes beyond its boundaries. In short, Hakiem: I hear things. I see things. I perceive patterns in events that others might consider unconnected. And of late the patterns I perceive have taken an ominous turn; throughout Ranke and beyond, the omens have been uncanny.”
The storyteller’s interest was piqued. “What does a man of your ‘far-flung interests’ consider uncanny?”
“The usual-two-headed roosters, hermaphrodite calves and lambs, a pig born without a heart, a boy-child born with its heart beating outside its ribs. I am, of course, able to conduct my own auguries here in Sanctuary. They’re less dramatic, but somewhat more precise, and reluctantly I have concluded that dire days are coming throughout the Empire, especially here in Sanctuary.”