Innkeeper's Song

by Peter S. Beagle

  “A raft would be more like it,” I said. Even putting that simple a sentence together in Dirvic, meaning seemed to slough away from the words like burned skin. I went on, “I am no boatwright, even if we had the time and the tools. But I have made rafts out of less than this, and sailed them, too.” I gestured at the trees—a type of thin-barked conifer I had never encountered before—and at the luxuriant blue vines enlacing most of them. “You and I could have a serviceable raft together by sundown. We might even manage a keel, the way they do in the O’anenue Islands. I’ve seen that done, long ago.”

  But Nyateneri was shaking his head slowly. “Not with these trees.” His expression was more gentle than mocking, even a bit sad. “There is no reason for you to know them, but in the north country where I was born we call them jaranas—jokers, joker-trees. They look like softwoods, but they’re so dense that they’ll drag the teeth out of any saw but the best Camlann work. And a raft made of joker-tree logs would sink before you had time to get aboard. I could have told you, if you had let me know your plan.”

  There was no triumph in his face, but in Dirvic everything sounds like a whining sneer. My turn now to look away, to pace silently back and forth, chewing one side of my tongue (a childhood habit) and feeling like an imbecile. It is true, what my friend said—I hate not knowing everything, even when it is not possible. More important, I had left myself with no back door, nothing in reserve in case it proved that I didn’t know everything. Even a ground-hare, a kumbii, knows better than that—in his world, just as in mine, carelessness is another name for Uncle Death, and I had been calling that name far too often lately. So I walked in circles and stared up at those useless trees until Nyateneri spoke again.

  Dirvic affects the voice in strange ways: it made me sound as young as Lukassa, and brought Nyateneri’s tone and pitch back almost to what it had been when I had thought of him as a woman. He said, “You are forgetting our faithful companion.”

  “Likely that’s the only thing I haven’t forgotten,” I said sharply. “Why else would we be fouling our mouths with this vile talk but for him in the shadows? What about him, then?”

  Nyateneri said, “I think he should help us with our boat. It seems only fair, when you think about it.”

  I looked at him so long that he finally began to smile, trying earnestly to smother it, I suppose to keep the man watching us from suspecting anything he didn’t suspect already. “Lal, I do not expect him to make one for us, no more than we could ourselves. He is no wizard, only a carefully trained murderer, but the heart of that training has to do with being very well prepared for the unexpected. And if the unexpected should include a journey by water, he will be ready.” He put a hand on my shoul-der, and once again I almost jumped and snapped at the kindness of it. He said, “It is an old intimacy.” Dirvic has no such word; I had to guess at his meaning. “I know these men as you know your dreams.”

  I stared at him a moment longer, and then burst out in loud laughter, gesturing my derisive rejection of his suggestion as broadly as I could. Pushing his hand from me and turning away, I said over my shoulder, “We will have to make him believe that we have set off downriver. That will not be easy.”

  Nyateneri shook his fist, shouting after me, “No, it will not be. Go sulk over there and think about it for a while.”

  So I did that. I walked off down the riverbank until I came to a low flat boulder, and there I sat with my knees drawn up to my chin, and I brooded as visibly as I could manage. And back in the middle of the quarter-moon, where we had tethered our horses and dropped our dwindling supplies, Nyateneri did the same thing, now and then shouting bits of classical northern poetry in impromptu Dirvic translation at me, accompanied by particularly threatening grimaces, which I did not deign to acknowledge. However the man may end, he was born to travel with a troupe of players, such as those sleeping in Karsh’s stable when we first arrived at The Gaff and Slasher. I have mentioned it to him since.

  We kept this up for some two hours, while the matronly Susathi slid by us, making no sound, and barely a ripple to blink in the sunlight. It was a dangerously peaceful place: no matter how urgently I set about the problem of getting away from it, no matter how furiously I bent my senses to catching the least rustle of breath or blood or footstep, the instant I allowed myself a breath for myself, then the soft, humming warmth had me again. I did not doze, exactly; but just once, when a fish jumped in midstream, I found myself on my feet, sword fully drawn, crying something in that language I no longer speak. I think I was calling to Bismaya.

  Toward evening, we began to move slowly and sullenly together, not shouting now, but speaking in a grumbling manner which Dirvic made suitably menacing. Almost simultaneously, almost in the same words, we said, “First of all, it must seem to be one of us, not both.” We could not help laughing truly then, but that was all right, because of what laughter sounds like in Dirvic. Nyateneri said, “The question is whether we fight or merely separate. I do think a fight would be nice.”

  “If you and I fought, someone would die. Quite probably the two of us. He knows that.”

  “Not a proper fight, just a sort of scuffle. Harsh words, cuffs, pushes—lovers irked beyond endurance. That’s what he thinks we are, after all.”

  He was mocking me now: that was clear enough, even through the impersonal malevolence of the language. I did not answer, but regarded him levelly up and down, making it plain in my turn that I was remembering the taste of his skin, and the rake of his nails down my sides, and the flowering leap of him inside me. Remembering everything, without regret and without longing. I said, “I will have to strike off upstream, leaving you here. You must appear to be building a raft alone.”

  “It will have to be a trash raft—driftwood, dead branches, whatever litter I can find. That’s the part that worries me, making the thing look like something that such a wily fugitive as Soukyan might sensibly try to ride downriver—let alone take over a rapids. Intimacy again, you see.”

  The deliberate use of his true name jarred me silent for a moment. I had only spoken it once since learning it, and I made quite sure never to think of him as anything but Nyateneri. “Wait until twilight, and stay well clear of the trees. How near can he possibly come without your seeing him?” Nyateneri gave me a tolerant glance which would have enraged Queen Vakalshakva the Unspeakably Good, who—as the tales have it—was of so benevolent a temper that savage rock-targs and nishori left their lairs to make pilgrimage to her court, lie at her feet, and ask blessing. They soiled the carpets and ate the servants—who, if not as saintly as she, were at least tasty—but Vakalshakva patiently replaced both and never rebuked them. I know eight songs about her, none written by either rock-targs or servants.

  I nodded slightly to a coil of tawny water-weed spinning slowly in a little eddy near the bank. “Gather as much of those dead-man’s-ringlets as you can. The stalks end in clumps of air-bladders, and you could very well be fixing them under the raft for buoyancy. They might even work.”

  “So they might,” Nyateneri said in a vicious Dirvic snarl, not looking in that direction. “Thank you, that’s a clever idea.” The words came out sounding like a blood insult, and he punched my shoulder abruptly, knocking me backward into a crackling tangle of brush, then laughing uproariously as I struggled to pick myself up. I said, “I’ll leave your pack with all the rope in it,” and hit him in the mouth.

  “Leave the empty water-bottles as well,” he reminded me, shaking me until my teeth clicked together. “Anything that floats. Circle back after dark, without the horses.”

  So we agreed on details, such as they were, all the while slapping and knocking each other up and down the shore. Our beasts looked on, nickering unconcernedly, and fish continued jumping after insects; and somewhere close among the joker-trees Nyateneri’s tireless enemy waited for nightfall. When all was as settled between us as it could be, I spat in his eye and stormed away, pausing only to shout back at him, “I’m very sorry that I didn’t
tell you my plan about building a raft. I am still Lal-Alone, and confiding even in a partner is hard for me. I am sorry.”

  Nyateneri bared his teeth and lifted a threatening hand. “I understand. I should tell you, incidentally, that I cannot swim.” I almost ended our charade right there, gaping at him in deepening alarm, but he growled, “Confidence for confidence. On your way, and remember that you have never in your life met anyone as dangerous as our little friend. Go now!”

  I stalked back to the horses and began furiously loading them, making a point of throwing Nyateneri’s pack to the ground when I hitched his horse to the Mildasi black. Then I mounted and set off, heading upstream, due west, not a backward glance until we were rounding the upper horn of the quarter-moon. Nyateneri looked small and distant already, bending to pick up an armload of the thick, rubbery dead-man’s-ringlets. I called, “Be careful!” trusting that evil language to make the warning into a parting curse. Nyateneri never raised his head. I spat again, this time, to rid my mouth of the shame of Dirvic, and rode on along the river shore.

  THE FOX

  Man into fox—fox into man—which?” Boy Tikat asks me that when we meet, only I stop his silly mouth with food, best way then. But truth—truth is not one on top, not the other underneath. Fox and man-shape side by side, never enough room, and below, oh, below! Below is nothing, such an old, old nothing, long ago it turns into a something. True. Even nothing wants, sometimes even nothing grows hungry to hear voices, songs, smell morning earth, drink water, munch up a pigeon. Me? A finger of nothing, a toe—but me even so, doing what I want. Nyateneri wants this, man-shape wants that, I do what I want. But when old nothing calls, I go.

  And old nothing is stirring—cold, heavy, sleepy nothing feels him, tricky magician at the inn, alone in a little place, gone to earth like a fox—yesyes, and that other, it feels that one too, reaching, searching, almost knowing, almost sure. Over the inn, all around, power gropes for power—dogs know it, chickens know it, even weather knows it. Bright, hot sun, not a cloud, day after day, and always the smell of rain, but no rain. Old nothing says in me, “Find out. Find out.”

  So. Nyateneri is far away, and man-shape sits all rosy in the taproom again, tells long stupid stories, asks, listens, watches. Inn is swarming like a dead log full of grubs— always pilgrims, peddlers, canal bargemen, soldiers on leave, once or twice a sheknath hunter with his razor-silk net, his double lances. Rosseth too sad to talk, Marinesha too busy, never liked man-shape anyway. Gatti Jinni will talk all day, keep the red ale coming, but what does little angry-face know? Same for Shadry, the cook, stupid as the potboys he beats. Boy Tikat keeps all away from man-shape, never even looks across the taproom. Fat innkeeper lumbers in and out and in, fetches and serves, shouts at soldiers when they pinch Marinesha. He looks hard at man-shape every time—nice smile back, every time, why not? No pigeon feathers on this smile.

  “The girl,” says old nothing. “The girl.” But she spends most times with wicked magician, only goes back to her room at night. If a soft, so soft fox slips under her arm, nuzzles close, then she whispers, “There you are,” and bends her head to me. “Small one, where is Lal, where is Nyateneri, do you know? The tafiya—” that is her name for him—“the tafiya says they are fools, and will be eaten by rock-targs and fall in a river and drown, and not to worry about them. But I do. Tell me where my friends are, small one.” Over and over until she falls asleep holding me too hard.

  No use to old nothing in that, but what to do about it? Humans talk one way to a bedtime toy, another way to another human. Take the man-shape in her bed? Say, “Hello, only me, we have slept like this nights on nights.” Wake Lal and Nyateneri, that scream would, wherever they sleep now. Best to wait until very early morning, first twilight, sometimes she walks a little by herself. Best to wait, I tell old nothing.

  But the sky is pulling tight. Every day, one horizon to the other, sky and air creaking as power gropes for power. Wind grinds, aches; water comes apart—you can taste, see it in the least little dog-puddle, hear it in stone floor of the taproom, hear it in voices. At the inn, peddlers struggle to lift packs, sit down and cry. Soldiers drink and nothing happens, pilgrims forget prayer words, fight each other— bargemen, everyone sick, stumble into doorposts, say Shadry poisons them. And all of it the working of him upstairs, all of it. I know. Hide, keep hiding, yes, pull the air tight, tight over him, that other must not find him. Oh, never mind foxes, people, no matter pilgrims even— no matter if everything tears, splits down the middle like a water beetle hatching itself into a thunderwing, and what then? What hatchling comes then, do they wonder, those two? Nono, never mind that, never mind. Magicians.

  Old nothing: “The girl.” So outside with man-shape, out into dusty twilight, museful stroll in the courtyard, contemplate naril tree, a turn through the orchard, a turn back. Now she comes—little sharp steps, quick turn to look here, there, every moment afraid of meeting boy Tikat. See her, sad round ordinary face, and behind it the white fire—but not her fire, nothing to do with her, poor thing—see her coming just so, so many paces this way, so many that way, an invisible cage, real enough to throw a shadow. Sorry for a human? Not possible, not for me, not. And still.

  Forward Grandfather man-shape: dim, gentle smile, peaceful movements, not to frighten in the dusk. Beautiful evening, sweet birds singing (truth: hardly a one, not these nights), how good to find even more loveliness abroad. Such a fortunate old gentleman. Walk with, a little?—perhaps toward the highway and back? Even politeness happily accepted, this age.

  No word, no nod, but she takes man-shape’s arm and we walk. Prattle, mumble, pat her hand sometimes, first time walking so in twenty years, imagine. But where are her companions? The tall brown woman, elegant as rain? The black one with her long, graceful eyelids like ships’ sails? Man-shape will say anything. She is shivering, not in the flesh but all the way down, beyond bones. “In danger.” Other words, too, but so low I hear only those.

  Old nothing: “What danger?” What danger?—caught between stupid magicians, what else? But no care for that, old nothing needs more. Never says what it needs—feels, feels, hungers, always sure about that, but never the words. Very hard on a poor fox, all this living sideways through three worlds. I say, “Indeed, these mountains can be most perilous. There are bandits, there are nishori, rock-targs—”

  Shakes her head—“Not those, none of those. My friends—they have gone to fight a wizard, and there is no fighting him. I know this, I know this!” Trembling in the body now, brown eyes full of tears, but none fall. “He cannot be killed—I know!”

  There, old nothing? Is that it, what you want? Man-shape chuckles, much hand-patting, says, “Take heart, my dear, there never was a wizard who could not die. All the stories about bargains with Uncle Death, about elixirs, hearts hidden in golden caskets or hollow trees or the moon—all stories, child, and you may believe me.” And a comfort to me, as much as the girl—an immortal magician, the thought of it, the injustice. Old nothing would never permit, surely.

  But she is not comforted, never even lets me finish, but pulls her arm away, crying, “No, no—I told them, I did tell them, but they would not understand. He cannot be killed!” Staring at me, pale face pleading, wanting so much for nice white mustache to understand. Me? Oh, I look up, down, away toward the highway, away toward the inn. Well-pump squealing, a few drunken drovers singing, no one in sight. But something watches. I know what I know.

  Her voice, low, quiet, but tearing too, like the sky. “I was dead once. I drowned in a river. Lal found me.” Every night, the same whisper into bedtime fox’s fur, telling herself the same story again, maybe this time it comes out differently? She says, “Lal promises me and promises me that I am alive now. But all I understand is death.” No Uncle Death—always supposed to call him “Uncle Death,“ even foxes. Lukassa says, ”Everything I knew before the river has been taken from me. In that emptiness, death sits and talks to me and tells me things. Lal and Nyateneri cannot
ever defeat Arshadin, cannot ever kill him. He is just like me—there is no one to kill.”

  “Ah,” sighs old nothing, a long, long breath across all my lives. “Ah.” Very good for old nothing, but man-shape still has to make words. Man-shape pulls mustache, rumples side-whiskers, rounds kindly blue eyes. “Well, child, if your friends have gone off to do battle with a dead wizard, the worst that can happen to them will be a long walk back. Dead is dead, whoever you are, and you may believe me.”

  But now she is the one looking away, not hearing at all. Turn, quickly, and there he is, stumping along, big pale hands shut tight, big bald head down, dirty apron slipping off his waist—who but fat innkeeper himself? Lukassa’s hand slides through man-shape’s hand like snow. Not another word, not a glance, straight past innkeeper, proud as princesses she has never seen, walking back to her invisible cage. And in me, of me, old nothing: “Ah.” All slow and dozy again, got whatever it wanted, time to sleep now—good, let it sleep, sleep, turn, grumble, sleep more, stop playing with fingers and toes. Time to leave poor foxes alone for a while.

  Innkeeper looks after Lukassa, rubs his head, slow look at man-shape. Oh, too much not to laugh, too much to ask! Quick-quick, squeeze it into rumbly old chuckle, a greeting to fat fool who tumbles his own house upside down, every room to pieces, every guest out of bed, all for such a few, few pigeons. Always stares at man-shape, never speaks, never serves. Imagine if I tell him, “Hello, new foxhound is no good, waste of money. More birds in soon?” Instead a deep bow, one gentleman to another, a smile, a compliment on beautiful evenings always served at his inn. Man-shape will say anything.

  Grunt. “None of my doing.” Grunt. “You see my stable boy anywhere?” In the stable, surely? Grunt. “Looked there.” Rubs head again, yanks off dangling apron. “Bloody boy, never where he’s supposed to be these days.” Not angry, not quite sad—not quite anything, only tired. Interesting.