Innkeeper's Song

by Peter S. Beagle

  The inn was somehow smaller within than it had seemed from outside. We entered through the kitchen—a woman came pushing past us in the greasy smoke, and then a man, but I never really saw them, my eyes were watering so. Someone was chopping meat so furiously that the racket drowned out whatever he was screaming. Rosseth led me like a blind man into the dining hall, where the smoke thinned out enough for me to see a good dozen or more people seated at their dinners. The chairs and tables were rough, splintery work, legs all uneven—I remember that especially, remember thinking, Oh, we do much better than that back home. The hall felt cold to me after the kitchen, in spite of the flames booming in the fireplace. It had a low ceiling of soot-blackened half-logs, held up by huge posts with the bark still on them. There were three lamps hanging from the crossbeams, swinging slowly in a draft and sending long, slow shadows twisting over the plaster walls. Rushes rattled underfoot.

  No one took any notice of us. The guests looked little different from the ones who used to stop the night with Grandmother Taiwari, who alone in our village kept a room or two for travellers. A few merchants, a long table full of drunken drovers, a sailor, a holy man and woman making a pilgrimage to the hills—and off in a far corner, watching everything, a fat, pale man in a dirty apron. Rosseth led me toward him, saying out of the smiling side of his mouth, “Remember this. He detests people who contradict him, but he despises people who don’t. Bear it in mind.” The fat man watched us approach.

  Close to, he was bigger than I had thought, exactly as his inn seemed smaller. Raw dough, nothing but dough, a gingerbread man who had magically escaped the oven.

  His face was bread pudding, with moles and blemishes for the occasional raisin or berry; but the eyes stuck into it were round and blue and surprised, a little boy’s eyes under the creased, pouchy lids of a grum old man. I do not know if they would have seemed ordinary eyes in a gentler face. What I know is that I have never again in my life seen eyes like the eyes of fat Karsh the innkeeper.

  Rosseth spoke rapidly. “Sir, this is Tikat. He comes from the south, looking for work.” The sweet blue eyes considered me, the thin mouth hardly parted; the fat man’s voice rasped its way through the dinner noise. “Another of your midden-heap strays? This one doesn’t look as though it could empty a chamberpot.” The blue eyes forgot me.

  Rosseth patted my arm, winked, and moved quickly to put himself back into Karsh’s line of sight. “He’s weary, sir, travel-worn, I’m not denying that. But give him a meal and a night’s sleep, and he’ll be ready for any task you set him, in or out of doors. I promise you this, sir.”

  “You promise.” The voice was heavy with dismissal, but he did look at me again, longer and more thoughtfully, finally shrugging. “Well, let him get his meal and his sleep where he likes and see me tomorrow. There might be something for him, I can’t say.”

  “He can sleep in the loft with me—” Rosseth began, but Karsh’s head turned toward him and his voice cracked and dried. Karsh said, “A day’s work for a night’s lodging. I said, let him come back tomorrow.” The thick, wrinkled eyelids almost hid the little boy’s eyes.

  Rosseth started to say something further, but I put him aside. My head was still swinging in and out, vast and clanging one minute, a withered pignut the next. I said, “Fat man, fat man, listen carefully to me. I have not come as far and hard and lonely as I have come to sleep and eat in your sty. I will work well for you, better than anyone you have, until my Lukassa returns, and then we will go home together. And while I work for you, beginning this night, I will sleep in your stable and eat as good a meal as you serve anyone.” Rosseth was desperately converting his grin into a coughing fit, muffling it in his sleeve. “If you do not agree to this, say so and be damned—I could find better quarters with no money than the best this midden-heap can offer. But I will be back for Lukassa tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, so you might as well get some use out of me, don’t you think?” There was more I said, but the echoes in my head drowned out the words. Rosseth’s hands were under my shoulders again, easing me down into a chair.

  When I could open my eyes, the innkeeper was still studying me, his sagging white face as blank as the meal-sack it resembled. I heard Rosseth saying earnestly, “Sir, we do need the extra help just now, with the two new parties staying as long as they’ll be—” and then the slow reply, like a keel grating over stones, “I had no need to be reminded. Be quiet and let me think.” Doubtless it was only my exhaustion, but it seemed to me that the clamor of the dining hall softened slightly at his words. I had disliked Karsh the innkeeper on sight—I still do—but there was more to him than bread pudding.

  “Take him away with you,” he said to Rosseth after a time. “Feed him in the kitchen, let him sleep where he will, and in the morning set him to cleaning the bathhouse and stopping those holes you haven’t yet touched, where the frogs get in. After that, Shadry should have some use for him in the kitchen.” He opened his eyes wide for a moment and peered at me with some kind of wonder that I was too weary to understand, drawing a breath as though to say something further, important, something to do with Lukassa, with me. But instead he looked at Rosseth again, mumbling, “Those two, those men, anywhere about, have you seen them?” Rosseth shook his head, and Karsh turned without another word and disappeared into a back room. He moved gracefully, the way a wave swells and rolls from shore to shore, never quite breaking. My mother, who was also fat, moved that way.

  Rosseth said, very quietly, “My,” and began to laugh.

  He said, “I know what I told you, but I can’t believe—” and his voice trailed away a second time. “Come on,” he said, “you’ve earned as much dinner as you can eat. What is it, what’s the matter, Tikat?” At the drovers’ table they had begun singing a dirty song that every child in my village knows. It made me think of Lukassa, and I was ashamed. Rosseth said, “Come on, Tikat, we’ll go and have our dinner.”

  ROSSETH

  They came back just as Tikat and I were finishing our meal, which we ate outside, sitting under the tree where Marinesha liked to hang her washing. I heard them first—three plodding horses and the unmistakable squeak of Lal’s saddle, which no amount of soaping and oiling could get rid of. Tikat knew it too: he dropped his bowl and wheeled to see them passing in the dusk, turning into the courtyard, Nyateneri’s eyes and cheekbones catching the light as she leaned to say something to Lal. Lukassa rode some way behind them, reins slack, looking down. None of them noticed us as they went by.

  In honesty, I forgot about Tikat for the moment. His concern with Lukassa was his concern; mine was to warn Nyateneri about the two smiling little men who had come seeking her. I jumped up and ran calling, and Lal as well as Nyateneri reined in to wait for me. Behind me I heard Tikat crying, “Lukassa!” and the sorrow and the overwhelming joy and thankfulness in that one word were more than I could understand then, or ever forget now. I did not look back.

  Clinging to Nyateneri’s stirrup, I panted out everything: what the men had done and said, how they had looked, sounded, what it had felt like to be breathing the air they breathed—very nearly as terrible as strangling in their hands. I remember how vastly pleasant it was, when I got to that part, to hear Lal miss a breath and feel Nyateneri’s hand tighten on my shoulder for just a moment. She seemed neither frightened nor surprised, I noticed; when Lal asked her, “Who are they?” she made no reply beyond the tiniest shrug. Lal did not ask again, but from that point she watched Nyateneri, not me, as I spoke.

  I was telling them how Karsh had gotten the men to leave the inn when there came a sudden wordless shout from Tikat, a rattling flurry of hooves, and Lukassa exploded into our midst as we all turned, her horse’s shoulder almost knocking Lal out of the saddle. Lukassa made no apology: it took Nyateneri and me to calm all three horses, while she gasped, over and over, “Make him stop saying that, make him stop! He must not say that to me, make him not say it!” Her eyes were so wild with terror that they seemed to have chan
ged shape, because of the way the skin was stretched around them.

  Tikat came up after her, moving very slowly, exactly as you do when you’re trying not to frighten a wild creature. His face, his whole long body, all of him was plainly numb with bewilderment. He said—so carefully, so gently—“Lukassa, it’s me, it’s Tikat. It’s Tikat.” Each time he said his name, she shuddered further away from him, keeping Lal’s horse between them.

  Nyateneri raised an eyebrow, saying nothing. Lal said, “The boy is her betrothed. He has followed us a very long and valiant way.” She saluted Tikat with a strange, flowing gesture of both hands at her breast—I was never able to copy it, though I tried often, and I have never seen it made again. “Well done,” she said to him. “I thought we had lost you a dozen times over. You know how to track almost as well as you know how to love.”

  Tikat turned on her, his eyes as mad as Lukassa’s, not with fear but with despair. “What have you done to her?” he shouted. “She has known me all her life, what have you done? Witch, wizard, where is my Lukassa? Who is this you have raised from the dead? Where is my Lukassa?” Three hours I’d known him, proud and stubborn and cranky, and my heart could have broken for him.

  “Well, well, well, well, well,” Nyateneri said softly to nobody. Lal reached out and took hold of Lukassa’s hands, saying, “Child, listen, it’s your man, surely you remember.” But Lukassa jerked back from her as well, scrambling frantically down from her horse and rushing toward the inn. On the threshold she collided with Gatti Jinni, who went over on his back like a beetle. Lukassa fell to one knee—Tikat cried out again, but did not follow—then struggled up and stumbled through the door. The noise of the drovers’ singing swallowed her up.

  In the silence, Nyateneri murmured, “Secrets everywhere.”

  “Yes,” Lal said. “So there are.” She swung down from her saddle, and after a moment Nyateneri joined her. Lal handed me the three horses’ reins, saying only, “Thank you, Rosseth,” before she hurried toward the inn herself. Nyateneri winked slowly at me and strolled after her. Gatti Jinni continued rolling and squalling on the doorstep.

  I did what I could. I took all the reins in one hand, and I put my free arm around Tikat’s shoulders, and I brought everybody back to the stable. The horses crowded me, eager for their stalls, but Tikat came along as docilely as though he were on a rope himself, or a chain: head low, arms hanging open-palmed, feet tripping over weed-clumps. He said no word more, not even when I helped him up the ladder to the loft, raked some straw together, gave him my extra horse-blanket, and wished him goodnight. While I was rubbing the horses down, I thought I heard him stirring and muttering, but when I climbed up again to bring him some water, he was deeply asleep. I was glad for him.

  With the horses taken care of, I thought I had better go up to the inn and help Marinesha clear away dinner. I was halfway there when a figure seemed to leap out of the bare ground just in front of me. I almost dropped to the ground myself—those two hunters were somewhere very near, I knew that in my belly—but the shape hailed me, and I recognized that curious sharp voice immediately. It was the old man with the grandson in Cucuroa, the one who wandered into the inn now and again to sit long over his ale and chat with anyone he could find. As handsome a grandsir as ever I’d seen by far, with his bright cheeks, white mustache, and marvelously long, delicate hands. Every time I watched him turning one of our earthenware mugs round and round between them, talking of strange beasts and old wars, I would think, I wish I had hands like that, and a life that such hands could tell and frame. Although I had never seen him with Lal, Nyateneri, or Lukassa, I thought of him in the same way: a southwest wind blowing across my common days, smelling of such stories, such dreams, as all my soul could not contain, let alone understand. His voice made me nervous and irritable if I listened to it for very long, but that seemed right too, then, in those days.

  “And there you are,” he said, “and where else should I have expected to find you but journeying between one chore and the next?” He patted my arm and smiled at me out of eyes as blue as Karsh’s eyes, but completely different, eyes like snow in shadow, almost as edged and painful to look at as his voice was to hear. He said, “Tireless child, I am sent bearing yet another task for you. The lady Nyateneri has gone to the bathhouse this quarter of an hour past, and wishes you to attend her there. I volunteered to bring you the message if I met you on my way home. Now you have it and I will be gone, and a very good evening, young Rosseth.” He was already by me with those last words, already easing into darkness.

  The summons did not strike me as unusual. The bathhouse at The Gaff and Slasher was a grand one for the time and the region, with two rooms: one for a tub and the other divided by a long trench filled with great stones.

  By now Nyateneri would have lighted the fire laid under the stones and some would be starting to glow red. Steam-baths are popular enough in other northern parts, but never much so around Corcorua—Nyateneri was one of the few guests I had ever seen make use of Karsh’s odd and only extravagance, which he loudly regretted building every day that I ever knew him. I never thought to turn and look after the old man, but hurried on the rest of the way to the inn.

  At the kitchen pump, I drew two buckets of water and started for the bathhouse. The path was treacherous in the darkness, being cross-laced with thick old tree-roots— even knowing it as well as I did, I could have broken an ankle almost as easily as spilling a bucket—and I went slowly for that reason, and for another as well, which I admit with some shame even now. To raise steam within the bathhouse, I never went inside, but gradually poured the cold water over the hot stones through a channel set low down between the logs. But there was another space, a bit below eye level, a slit as long as my hand and wide as my thumb, through which I had great hopes of glimpsing Nyateneri before the steam hid her nakedness. I offer no defense of this behavior, except perhaps what came of it.

  The night was so still that I could easily hear Nyateneri’s soft footsteps, so close. I wished the rising half-moon out of the sky behind me, since I feared that one as quick as she might well notice the golden glint suddenly vanishing when my head blocked the light. Setting down one bucket, I began carefully tilting the other, stooping at the same time to peer through the tiny gap in the bathhouse wall.

  For a moment I saw nothing but bark and my own eyelashes. Then something bright flashed across my vision and instantly back—left, right—followed by a swift double thump of feet, as though one dancer had mimicked the step or leap of another. I pressed my face closer against the logs, squinting for all I was worth, and at once caught my longed-for, impossible, mouth-drying view of Nyateneri’s left breast. For just a moment, it filled my vision: golden-brown as summer hills, round as the piniak gourds that spill over the market stalls a bit later in the year, with just their sudden upward lilt at the tips. I heard her voice, speaking in a language that I had never heard, and then a reply in the same tongue. The answering voice was a man’s, and I knew it from the first word.

  Nyateneri moved away from the wall, giving me a better perspective on the steam-room. She stood with her back to me now, long legs wide apart and slightly bent at the knees, a dagger in her left hand and a bathtowel wound loosely around her right arm. Beyond her I could see the fire-trench and smell the heat of the huge dark stones. She spoke again, her voice amused and inviting, beckoning with the dagger. Another man replied, and a moment later Half-Mouth moved into my view on the far side of the trench, grinning like a snake as he approached Nyateneri, barely lifting his feet, yet somehow dancing. He carried no weapon at all.

  When he was close enough that I could hear his light, unhurried breathing, Nyateneri suddenly flicked the towel in his face and leaped easily across the fire-trench to land half-crouched on the other side. Blue Eyes was waiting for her there, sliding in to come under her guard before she regained her balance. But she had never lost it: the dagger flickered too fast for my one eye at the crack to follow, and she was past him a
s he drew back and heading for the door. Behind her, Blue Eyes licked at his left wrist and chuckled quietly, not bothering to turn.

  I could not see the door, nor Half-Mouth either—I could only listen for the thud of his feet and Nyateneri’s, and judge from Blue Eyes’ placidity that she had not made her escape. An instant later, she was back in my range of vision and on his side of the fire-trench, literally whirling toward him, spinning so fast that her one dagger looked like a dozen. Blue Eyes got out of the way only by springing high into the air and somersaulting over the slash that passed within two inches of his belly. As he came down, he slashed out himself—it seemed only with three fingers, and I never saw the blow land. But Nyateneri tumbled sideways, against the wall, and the two of them were at her, laughing in their awful voices. I heard my own voice then, crying out in despair, as she never did. I think they heard me, too.

  It would be nice to think that my useless wail distracted them even in the least, but I doubt it very much. What is important is that Nyateneri doubled herself, kicked out and rolled in a way I can’t describe, and was back across the fire-trench while Half-Mouth and Blue Eyes were still getting to their feet. Half-Mouth was breathing differently now, and what he called to her had no laughter in it, in any language. Nyateneri did a quick little saunter of triumph, flourishing her dagger and slapping her rump in derision. May I be forgiven for finding her beautiful and myself as disgracefully randy as any dog, in the midst of my terror for her.

  So it began, and so it went on, that dance of hunters and quarry that I can still see in its every pace to this day. Nyateneri plainly had no desire to come to close quarters with Blue Eyes and Half-Mouth, unarmed or no: her goal was the door and the night beyond. For their part, they wanted nothing but to get past her dagger, and room to use their long, thin hands. One on each side of the fire-trench, they pressed and harried her, trusting themselves to wear her down, content to let her whirl and jeer and flurry out of their grasp, knowing that sooner or later she must stumble, must misjudge, must need one breath too many. They had her both ways: she could not kill them; and, elude them as she might, as long as she might, she could not get out of the bathhouse. The end was certain—I knew it as well as they.