by Sean Wallace
King Stormproud fell to war’s caress,
Left Swanisle to his boy,
Who had not learned to love distress:
Soft-hearted was Rainjoy.
Gaunt gave Bone a sharp look, listening.
His shivering toes just touched the floor
When he claimed his father’s chair.
When the sad queen’s heart would beat no more
He tore his silky hair.
The nun rose. The intruders hid themselves behind the onyx, speckled pulpit as she approached the altar, still singing.
Yet when a wizard of county Gaunt
(Spawnsworth was his name)
Tried his wicked strength to flaunt
The boy king’s heart took flame.
For all Gaunt’s fear, and all its horror
Marched as Rainjoy’s foe.
Enfleshment was the wizard’s lore –
To fashion warriors from woe.
The sister knelt where the wine was kept, the wine that symbolized the goddess’s blood, shed to make all life possible. She cast a surreptitious glance over her shoulder. Her face was a pale, dimly glowing blue, growing brighter as she sang.
Rainjoy led his armies north,
Felled the work of Spawnsworth’s hands,
Yet surely more would soon ride forth
Till they conquered all his lands.
Now the bards of Gaunt were rightly known
To clasp old secrets to the breast.
So the army overturned every stone
Till the king beheld the best.
The nun passed her hand over the wine vessel, and shining droplets fell into the dark liquid. They quickly dimmed, and the wine appeared as before.
“Gaunt’s ancient thanes,” King Rainjoy spoke,
“The very land would quick obey.
To free it from the wizard’s yoke
I must know Gaunt as did they.”
The woman said, “What you seek takes years,
A lifetime spent in Gaunt,
A knowledge born of woe and tears,
Not a young man’s morning jaunt.”
“My father died on Eldshore’s strand.
My mother died of loss.
A wizard makes to seize my land –
This die I’ll gladly toss.”
At last Gaunt could stand waiting no more, and stepped forward. The nun ceased singing, caught her breath.
Gaunt curtsied. Meanwhile Bone leapt forward, tumbled, rolled, and stood where he blocked the nun’s best retreat. He bowed low, eyes upon her.
In a hot, dusky voice more evocative of tavern than tabernacle, the nun said, “You are agents of the king, I take it?” She raised her head, showing a weary blue face and sapphire smile like a dagger-cut. “I’ve sensed my siblings being gathered.”
“You are correct. I am Persimmon . . . of Gaunt. A poet. This is my companion, Bone. We bear Rainjoy’s plea for your help. He must marry Eldshore’s princess to stop a war, but she refuses. She senses Rainjoy feels no sorrow, knows no compassion.”
“A wise woman.” The tear laughed, one sharp, jarring note. “I am Sister Scald. You are a poet of Gaunt? Did Gaunt’s bards train you, before Rainjoy exiled them?”
“They did,” Gaunt said, “before exiling me.”
Glimmering eyes widened. “Did you learn ‘Rainjoy’s Curse’?”
“Yes,” Gaunt said. And she did not sing, but continued Scald’s song in speech.
She led him then, where doomed ships had lunged
At cliffs where white foam churned;
To chasms where young suitors plunged;
To pyres where bards had burned.
She wooed him with rhymes of sailors drowned,
And songs of lovers dead,
And poems of bards long in the ground,
Until she wooed him to her bed.
Into a fevered dream he fell
Of the web that snares all lives –
One soul’s joy breeds another’s hell.
One suffers, and one thrives.
He woke to slaps: For bedding her so,
She offered jibe and taunt.
He trembled chill as she did go;
For now he knew the soul of Gaunt.
And when the nightmare horde returned,
Raised from Gaunt’s old pain,
He told it, “Sleep, for I have learned:
Let the land swallow you again.”
The warriors melted into earth
And the wizard quick was seized.
Spawnsworth said, “O king of worth,
How might you be appeased?”
Rainjoy trembled. “I feel each death.
All paths shine slick with blood.
I cannot bear to end your breath.”
The mage swore fealty where he stood.
A king of Swanisle delights in rue
And his name’s a smirking groan.
But in Rainjoy endless tears did brew
And he longed for eyes of stone.
Scald’s voice bit the silence. “He has those eyes now. The bards gave him knowledge of all life’s woe, but Spawnsworth tricked him out of his tears. For a time he still consulted us, but who willingly seeks out sorrow? At last he consulted us no more. He became the sort of king Spawnsworth could control.”
“He senses what he’s lost. Serve him again.”
“I serve others now.”
Bone broke in. “Indeed? Your brother served others with bottled grief, your sister with a bridge of doomed desire. We threatened these contrivances; the tears surrendered. I say good riddance.”
“You mock their work, thief ?” Scald seized Bone’s chin, locked eyes with his. “I see into your soul, decrepit boy. You’ve begun aging at last, yet you fritter away your moments impressing this foolish girl. And you,” she released Bone, snatched Gaunt’s ear, “you forsook the glory of voice and memory for clumsy meanderings of ink. Now you neglect even that dubious craft following this great mistake of a man.” Scald stepped back, dismissing poet and thief with a wave. “What a pair you are, what a waste of wind your love! Who are you to lecture me?”
Shivering, Gaunt looked away, toward the tall windows and bright stars. But she replied. “I will tell you, tear of Rainjoy. I was a girl who saw the boy king rescue county Gaunt from the creatures who tore her family to bits. I was a bard’s apprentice who loved him from afar. And when my teacher boasted of how she granted his request by breaking his spirit, I knew I’d follow her no more.”
She looked at Bone, who regarded her wonderingly. “I’d not guard secret lore in my skull, but offer my words in ink, telling of grief such that anyone could understand. I would tarry in graveyards and let tombs inspire my verse. For if the bards hoarded living song, I would peddle the dead, written word.” Gaunt returned her gaze to Scald. “When Spawnsworth made an end to Rainjoy’s weeping, the king’s first act was to exile the bards. And how I laughed that day. Come, tear. You cannot shame me. I will repay my teachers’ debt.”
“You surprise me,” Scald said, “but I think you will not take me. I have no bottles, no bridge to harm. My substance passes into the sacramental wine, inspiring the sisters’ music. Would you destroy all grapes in the world?”
“I do not need to.” Gaunt gestured toward the door.
Scald turned, saw a cluster of black, star-speckled habits underneath white swan hats.
A nun with a silver swan necklace stepped forward, old hands trembling. “We have listened, Sister Scald. Gaunt and Bone sent warning by carrier pigeon that they would seek a king’s tear this night, unaware we’d knowingly given you sanctuary. I have been torn, until this moment. I might defy even Rainjoy to honor our pledge, Scald . . . But you have meddled with our sacraments. You must go.”
“Oathbreaker,” Scald snarled. She looked right and left. “All of you – all humans are traitors, to yourselves, to others. Listen then, and understand.”
And Scald sang.
This song was wordless.
It was as though the earlier music was simply the white breakers of this, the churning ocean, or the moonlit fog-wisps crossing the lip of this, the crevasse. Now the cold depths were revealed. They roared the truth of human treachery, of weakness, of pain.
Before that song the humans crumpled.
“No . . .” Gaunt whimpered, covering her face.
“Nothing . . .” whispered Bone. “I am nothing . . . not man, not boy. A waste . . .”
Somehow, Bone’s anguish bestirred Gaunt to defy her own. “You are something.” She wrenched each word from her throat like splinters torn from her own flesh. “You are not a waste.”
The sisters knelt, some mouthing broken regretful words, some clawing for something sharp, something hard, to make an end. But Gaunt raised her head to the singer. “Scald . . .” It should have been a defiant cry, but it emerged like a child’s plea. “Look what you do, to those who sheltered you . . .”
Scald’s eyes were hard, lifted ceilingward in a kind of bitter ecstasy. Yet she looked, and for a time watched the nuns cringing upon the stone floor.
She went silent.
She walked to one of the high windows. “I am no better than you,” she murmured. “I sense my siblings, like me born of regret. It seems we cannot escape it.” Scald removed her swan cap and lowered her head. “We will go.”
Gaunt helped Bone to his feet. He clutched her shoulders as though grasping some idea rare and strange. “Why did you not tell me,” he said, “of your family?”
She lowered her gaze. “When you suggested Spawnsworth might deal with that accursed tome we’ve locked away, Bone, I believed his skills were not appropriate and his character untrustworthy. But I realized we two might somehow repay the debt I felt to Rainjoy. It was a deception, Bone, one that deepened with time. I feared you would be angry.”
He nodded. “Perhaps later. Now I am merely glad there is still a Gaunt to perhaps be angry with. It is done. For better or worse, we’ve recovered Rainjoy’s tears.”
She met his look. “Are they, Bone? Are they Rainjoy’s? Or are they more like grown children? I think, whatever their faults, they have seized control of their existence. I think they are people.” She scowled in frustration. “I fear Scald is right; I am never consistent.”
“You cannot deliver them up, now, can you?”
She shook her head. “Forgive me, Bone. We’ve gained nothing.”
“I disagree.” He leaned forward, kissed her.
Startled, she kissed him back, then pulled away. “You are changing the subject! You can never focus on one thing; you are forever a boy.”
“Fair enough, but I say you are the subject, and you are what I’ve gained. I know you better, now. And I would rather know you better, Persimmon Gaunt, than plunder all the treasure-vaults of Brightcairn. Though I’d cheerfully do both.”
She gaped at him. “Then . . . you have your wish. Whatever Scald may think of us.” She gazed at the bent figure beside the window. “To risk losing you three times this journey – it makes me care nothing for how odd is our love, our life. It is ours, and precious.”
“Then, my dear,” Bone said, “let’s discuss how we’ll evade the king’s assassins, when we break our pledge.”
“How precious . . .” Gaunt murmured, still watching Scald, and her eyebrows rose. “No, we will not break it, Bone! We will fulfill it too well.”
A storm frothed against King Rainjoy’s palace, and the hall of mists felt like a ship deck at foggy dawn. Salt, Mist, and Scald stepped toward the ivory throne, knelt beside the swan pool. Behind the Pale Council stood Persimmon Gaunt and Imago Bone.
Upon the throne, the king studied his prodigal tears.
“So,” he said.
The tears blinked back.
“Gaunt and Bone,” said the wizard Spawnsworth from beside the throne, his cloak twisting as though with suppressed annoyance. “I, ah, congratulate you. You have accomplished a great deed.”
“Not so difficult,” Bone said easily. “Send us to fetch the morning star’s shyer cousin, or the last honest man’s business partner, and we might have surrendered. These three were not so well hidden.” He smiled. “Anyone might have found them.”
“Whatever,” Spawnsworth said with a dismissive wave. “Your, um, modesty covers mighty deeds. Now, majesty, I would examine these three in private. They have dwelled apart too long, and I fear they might be, ah, unbalanced. It might be years before I dare release them.”
The tears said nothing, watching only Rainjoy.
“Yes,” Rainjoy murmured, staring back, agreeing to something Spawnsworth had not said. “Yes, I would . . . speak with them.”
Before the sorcerer could object, Gaunt said, “Alas, my king, Spawnsworth’s fears are quite justified. I regret where duty leads.”
With that, she drew a dagger and stabbed Sister Scald where her heart ought to have been.
By then Bone had sliced the glistening throats of Master Salt and Mistress Mist.
The king’s tears lost their forms, spilling at once from their robes, flowing like pale-blue quicksilver into the swan pool, where they spiraled down into the drain and were lost to sight.
“What?” King Rainjoy whispered, shaking, rising to his feet. “What?”
“It was necessary, majesty,” Gaunt said. “They had become mad. They meant you harm.”
“We suspected,” Bone said, “that only in your presence could they die.”
“Die,” echoed Rainjoy. He sank back on to the throne.
Spawnsworth had gone pale, his cloak twitching in agitated spasms. But his voice was calm as he said, “I will wish to investigate the matter, of course . . . but it seems you have done the kingdom a great, ah, service. It is not too late, I would say, to consider a reward. You sought my advice?”
Rainjoy cradled his head in his hands.
“Alas,” said Gaunt, her eyes on the king, “our time with the tears has been instructive regarding your art. It is powerful, to be sure, but not suited to our problem. No offense is meant.”
Spawnsworth frowned. “Then gold, perhaps? Jewels?”
Bone swallowed, but said nothing.
“My king,” said the sorcerer, “what do you . . .” Then he bit his lip.
Rainjoy wept.
“My king,” repeated Spawnsworth, looking more nonplussed than when Salt, Mist, and Scald vanished down the drains.
It was little more than a sparkling wetness along the left eye, a sheen that had barely begun to streak. Rainjoy wiped it with a silken sleeve. “It is nothing,” Rainjoy said, voice cold.
Gaunt strode around the pool and up to the throne, ignoring Spawnsworth’s warning look. She touched Rainjoy’s shoulder.
“It is something,” she said.
He stared at her wide-eyed, like a boy. “It is simply . . . I let them go for so long. I never imagined I would lose them forever. They did not obey.”
“Oh, my king,” Gaunt said, “my dear king. Tears cannot obey. If they could, they would be saltwater only.”
He held up the sleeve, dotted with a tiny wet stain. “I have tears again . . . I do not deserve them.”
“Yet here they are. Listen to them, King Rainjoy, even though these tears are mute. And never be parted from them.”
The king watched as Gaunt returned to Bone’s side. The poet gave the thief one nod, and Imago Bone offered the king an unexpectedly formal bow, before the two clasped hands and walked slowly toward the door. Rainjoy thought perhaps he heard the thief saying, Your penance, Gaunt, will consist of a six-city larcenous spree, which I shall now outline, and the poet’s answering laugh. Perhaps she cast a final look back, but the mists embraced her, and he would never be sure. He regretted it, that he’d never be sure.
“I am sad, Spawnsworth,” he said, wondering. “I do not sense life’s infinite sorrow. But I am sad.”
But Spawnsworth did not answer, and the light in his eyes was not nascent tears but a murderous glint. He stalked up the stairs.
I
n his tower there twitched a menagerie of personifications: howling griefs, snarling passions, a stormy nature blustering in a crystal dome, a dark night of the soul shrouding the glass of a mirror. In places there lurked experiments that twitched and mewled. Here a flower of innocence sprouted from the forehead of a gargoyle of cynicism. There a phoenix of renewal locked eyes forever with a basilisk of stasis.
Spawnsworth arrived in this sanctum, teeth grinding, and began assembling the vials of love’s betrayal and friendship’s gloom, the vials he would form into an instrument of revenge upon Gaunt and Bone.
There came a cough behind him.
He whirled and beheld three shining intruders.
“We are not easily slain, as you should know,” Master Salt said. He opened a cage.
“We, clearly, are more easily forgotten,” said Mistress Mist. She unstoppered a flask.
“But we will see you never forget us,” said Sister Scald, pushing a glass sphere to shatter against the floor. “We believe you could use our counsel. Ah, I see there are many here who agree.”
As his creations swarmed toward him, it occurred to Spawnsworth that the many grates in the floor, used to drain away blood and more exotic fluids, fed the same sewers as those in the hall of mists. “You cannot do this,” he hissed. “You are Rainjoy’s, and he would never harm me.”
“We are Rainjoy’s no longer,” the tears said.
He turned to flee, and felt his own cloak tremble with excitement and spill upward over his face.
Of the many voices heard from the sorcerer’s tower that hour, the one most human, the palace servants agreed, was the one most frightening. When they found Spawnsworth’s body in the room of empty cages, all remarked how the face was contorted with sorrow, yet the eyes were dry.
A RICH FULL WEEK
K. J. Parker
He looked at me the way they all do. “You’re him, then.”
“Yes,” I said.
“This way.”
Across the square. A cart, tied up to a hitching post. One thin horse. Not so very long ago, he’d used the cart for shifting dung. I sat next to him, my bag on my knees, tucking my feet in close, and laid a bet with myself as to what he’d say next.