Innkeeper's Song

by Peter S. Beagle

  Lal had hardly moved when I woke. Her breathing seemed more regular, but her skin was still too cold, and the blue tinge had spread to her face and throat as well. The vision in my left eye was only a little hazed now: one of the blows I never saw must have numbed a nerve. I still ached in many other places, but that would pass. I stood up in the thin, red mountain dawn and took in our situation. In front of me, the Susathi—not white-toothed yet, but not the placid creature of yesterday, either—in all other directions, nothing but stones and pale stubble and a scattering of the joker-trees. Unpromising, certainly, but nothing with a river in it is ever hopeless. I covered Lal with the sail again and limped naked down to the water to see about breakfast.

  Fish in these mountain rivers generally stay well away from the shores, because of prowling sheknath. The way to call them in is to snap your fingers underwater—if you do it right, using the second joint, not the first, for some reason the vibration is irresistible—and then to tickle their bellies very slowly, until they practically fall asleep in your hand. My sister taught me that trick.

  Coaxing up two fish of a proper size took time—time well-spent, as it turned out—but Lal was still asleep when I returned to her. Having lost my own knife, I used her swordcane to clean the fish and cooked them on sticks over a scanty driftwood fire as fragile and transparent as a baby bird. The good smell did not waken Lal for some while, but as I was beginning to grow truly alarmed, she opened her eyes and muttered, “Lost the yellow pepper. Sorry.” She was in too much pain even to sit up, let alone move to the fire. I fed her the little she would take, waking her when she dozed off, and gave her more water afterward. When she was asleep again, I banked the fire, borrowed her swordcane once more and went back to the riverbank. There, a few feet from where the boat was tied up, I had noticed several rocks blotched with smeary patches of a gray lichen that made them look as though they were rotting from the inside. This is called fasska in the north—crin, I think, in the eastern hills—and it grows only in high countries, and never plentifully. When I had scraped off what there was, I could have closed it all easily in one fist, except that you must not ever crush fasska so, else you destroy its virtue. If it smells at all bearable, you’ve already ruined it.

  I carried it back to my fire very carefully, wrapped it in my shirt—which was beginning to dry, the sun having finally escaped the mountain peaks—and set about finding something in which to heat water. Our cooking gear was with our packs, wherever they were; in the end I was lucky to find a broken tharakki egg, almost a good half, the size of my cupped hands. I rigged an absurd arrangement of sticks to hold it properly over the fire, then filled it partway with water, which I prayed would boil at this height. Lal woke a couple of times and stared silently at me out of eyes that were too large and shone too dryly.

  I talked to her while I worked, whether her eyes were open or closed. “Did he ever feed you this disgusting swill? It tastes like the dirt under your nails, but it’s useful when the spirit has taken the same beating as the body and they have to heal together or not at all. He made it for me the same day I came to him, and it’s a wonder I didn’t run off as soon as I could stand. One other time, too—you’ve seen that scar that runs halfway around my back? A rock-targ bit me half in two, and had a good start on the second half when I managed to shove an arrow into it. But by then I had screamed and prayed and wet myself and fouled myself with such fear that sewing me up was meaningless by itself. If he hadn’t poured enough fasska down my throat to wash away Corcorua market, I might still be staring at his ceiling. It’s that good, this muck, if you can only keep it down.”

  Lal said nothing. My eggshell of water did finally come to a boil, and I dumped the lichen scrapings into it and covered them with a broad leaf to hold in the heat. You have to steep fasska forever, or at least until you truly cannot endure the smell an instant more. The best thing then is to add two dried kirrichan leaves while it cools; somehow they tend to make the drink, which always remains silver-gray as a slug trail, a bit more palatable—but we were as short of those as of everything else but fish. Lal would have to take her healing raw, no help for it.

  Strangely, frighteningly, she put up absolutely no resistance when I made her sit up and began tipping the stuff into her mouth. I expected her to spit it back out—to the side, if my luck held. I expected snarls, curses, kicks in the shins with those horn-hard feet. What I got was a Lal who swallowed the fasska obediently, with no more protest than an occasional cough; beyond the slightest flinching of her lips, she might have been drinking ice-vine tea or red ale. When it was gone, she closed her eyes again and lay back silently, and did not stir for the rest of the day.

  I bathed and cleaned her as was necessary, washed myself in the river, slept a little, fished again, and spent most of the time in studying our one remaining possession. I had never seen such a boat before; indeed, it seemed more kite than boat to me. It cannot have been longer than twelve feet, and in its broadest section hardly as wide as I am tall; and finally it was nothing more than round and flat sticks fitted so tightly together that you could scarcely see the grooves between. Some of the sticks—the mast, for example—were actually a sort of hollow reed, and many must have telescoped to allow them to fit in a traveler’s pack. The wood itself was far lighter than any wood I knew; the sails were like silk, but not silk. Two people could have lifted the entire affair out of the water, but it was plainly made to carry one deadly passenger alone. I could not imagine how Lal had assembled it unaided, nor how we should manage the rest of our journey downriver—and just how far was that to be?—on a miniature that marvelously delicate. The sun slipped back down behind the mountains while I brooded on this, and the small breeze sharpened. Night comes early in the high country.

  I have said that Lal did not move all day, unless I moved her, neither before drinking the fasska nor after. When I lay down by her that second night, she was unchanged: heart steady, breath even enough, but her body distinctly colder than before. The firm pulse lied—she was slowing, she herself, in a way that I could do absolutely nothing about, if the drink could not. Her skin felt terribly dry, like the husk of an insect, and there was a sweet, faraway fragrance to it that alarmed me even more than the coldness. Someone’s childhood may perhaps smell like that, in memory, or someone’s dreams of an afterlife. Lal-Alone, Sailor Lal, does not.

  But in the night, sometime after midnight, she began to turn fitfully, waking me, and to mutter words in the language of her long private songs. Her voice grew louder, sounding frightened at first and then increasingly angry, and she struggled in my arms with her eyes staring. I held her as strongly and as carefully as I could, fearful that she would do one of us an injury if I let her go. For all that, she scratched my face more than once and bit her mouth bloody, crying out to someone whose name I did not know. That was nothing at all; what made it difficult to hold on was that the strange new scent of her body had become as unbearably sweet as the fasska’s smell was vile.

  Then the sweat came. Between one moment and the next, the cold dry fever had broken, and she was running with ordinary human sweat, soaking, sluicing with it, gasping and crying like a newborn, her head thrown back as though she were bathing under a waterfall. The drink had done its work—her smell was her own again, spicy and tart, almost bitter, her own, and there was Lal, slipping through my damp grip to sit up and announce shakily, “My swordcane smells of fish guts.”

  I had set it beside her, like a familiar toy, in case she woke. Now I gaped at her as she sniffed the thing a second time, made a face, and tried the blade against her thumb. Instantly she rounded on me—naked, shivering, barely able to hold herself erect—demanding fiercely, “What have you been doing with it? You’ve bloody ruined it, do you know that? Damn you, Soukyan, you’ve ruined my sword!”

  I took it out of her hand—already feeling her strength returning as she resisted me—and wrapped the entire sail around her to keep her from a chill. She struggled and swore, but I made
her lie back down and sat by her, saying, “I needed an edge. Your sword was all we had.”

  “Edge? Edge? Do you know how long it took me to put that edge on that blade? I’ll never be able to get it decently sharp again! What possessed you, what were you using it for, chopping stove logs?” Weak as she yet was— once she was down, she could barely lift her head to rail at me, and from time to time her voice cracked into inaudibility—she was also angrier than I had ever seen her. “Marinesha would have known better—Shadry would have known better!”

  “Shadry and Marinesha didn’t have to feed you and physic you,” I said. “I did, and I used what there was. If you hadn’t left our packs behind—”

  “I had to kill a man, build a boat, and save your stupid, pointless life! That stupid raft was about to catch fire, sink, I didn’t know when—I didn’t know if you were alive or dead, I wasn’t going to waste time hauling those bloody packs to the boat! He kept saying, ‘It’s burning, it’s burning.’” Her voice did not break then, nor were there tears in her eyes, but I felt as strange and uncertain as I had when she called me by my true name. She was so angry at me, and she looked eleven years old.

  I told her what had happened since she pulled me out of the river. She listened very quietly, never taking her eyes from my face. The sweat had stopped running—even her hair was drenched and her small ears dripping—and I realized for the first time how much weight she had lost in only two days. When I finished, she looked at me for a moment longer, then shook her head and blew her breath out softly. “Well,” she said. “Well. Thank you.”

  “You remember nothing of this?” I asked. “Not even the fasska? I can’t imagine that anyone could ever forget having drunk fasska.”

  “I remember nothing,” Lal said flatly. “I don’t like that.” She was silent again for a time before she smiled, and now she looked easily fifteen. She said, “But whatever you gave me, it was the right thing. I don’t know whether it saved my life, but it brought me back from”— she faltered briefly“—I think from a place where a gardener’s rhyme would not have reached me. Thank you, Soukyan.”

  “Thank you, Lalkhamsin-khamsolal,” I said. “Sleep now.”

  I dried her face and body with my shirt, and she was asleep before I finished, or seemed so. But as I lay down once more, settling my arm over her waist just as though we were veteran bedfellows, comfortable old campaigners, she mumbled drowsily, “Tomorrow we will be off downriver.”

  “No, we certainly will not,” I said into her ear. “You wouldn’t get as far as the boat.” My answer was a snore as delicate as lace. I lay awake for a little, listening to the water and watching stars disappear behind Lal’s shoulder.

  We had words before we had breakfast. She was entirely serious about taking up our journey immediately, and I nearly had to wrestle her down to persuade her even to listen to any contrary proposal. Which would have been difficult, incidentally: I have never known anyone, man or woman, with Lal’s recuperative powers. One rib cracked, the muscles beneath another badly bruised; left arm all but useless, right thigh too tender to touch, the rest of her body clearly shrieking in sympathy—all that, and she was on her feet before I was, inspecting the boat and trying to resharpen her swordcane against different sorts of rocks. We had words about that, too.

  Eventually we came to a compromise, aided perhaps by a brief dizzy spell on Lal’s part. We would be on our way on the following morning, come wind, come weather, and in addition she would continue to wear the sail-bandage around her battered ribs. For myself, I swore to treat her with no more consideration than I had since we left Corcorua, and never, never, to ask how she was feeling. On that understanding, we fished, dozed and talked through the day, discussing with some chagrin that third assassin who had so humiliated us both, and making what plans we could for our utterly futile assault on Arshadin’s home.

  I want to make that very clear to you. Between us, Lal and I have a good deal more experience than most of strange combats in stranger places. But neither of us had ever had the least illusion that we were about to overcome a wizard powerful enough to make a desperate fugitive of our master. As I had told Rosseth, we were a diversion at very best, nothing more, and we could only hope that my Man Who Laughs would be able to make good use of whatever breath we might buy him. Assuming, of course, that Arshadin ever bothered to notice that he was under attack. Part of our experience has to do with knowing when you have attracted the attention of such things as wizards, and I had no sense at all that we were being observed as we bathed in the river, dried ourselves in the afternoon sun, and spoke of the days to come. Which shows you exactly what experience is worth.

  “I have never pretended to be a sailor,” I said, “but I will never trust any boat that fits in somebody’s pack. Even I know that’s wrong.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Lal said. “An absolutely beautiful design. I wish you knew more about boats, or about your old religious colleagues, either would do. I became so fascinated, trying to learn how it went together, I almost forgot that I was hurt and you were in danger. Anyway, I promise you that it won’t sink under us. I really don’t think it can. Amazing.”

  She was as delighted with that wretched boat as though we had already completed our mission and destroyed Arshadin. I felt at once guilty at having to remind her of reality and angry at her for making me feel guilty. I said, “It had better be amazing. It had better be able to shoot a bow, climb a wall, fight off rock-targs, nishori, and magicians, sew clothes, forage for game, and practice medicine. Because all our stores and all our weapons are back there up the river, with a dead man to guard them. All we can hope for, as far as I can see, is that Arshadin may laugh so hard at us that he hurts himself. I am told it happens.”

  I expected Lal to flare out at me again when I spoke so, but she remained placid for once, even seeming a bit amused. “All we need do is annoy him,” she answered, “and if you and I cannot make ourselves thoroughly disagreeable with nothing but our fingernails, then we should retire and help old Karsh to run The Gaff and Slasher. Now help me take this sail down, I want to try a different rigging.” As we worked, she began singing to herself in her usual tuneless, monotonous manner. I was almost glad to hear her.

  That night, when I thought she was asleep, she turned suddenly and pressed herself against me, holding me as hard as one working arm would allow. Even at the inn, that one evening, she had not embraced me in that way. I stroked her hair awkwardly, and tucked the sail closer around her shoulders. I said, “What is it? Are you feeling ill?” Then I remembered that I had promised not to ask that question, and I said, “I never meant to alarm you about our chances. We will deal with Arshadin as we deal with him.” But that sounded as foolish and condescending as it was, and I did not finish saying it. Lal made no answer, but held onto me a moment longer, and then rolled away from me in one abrupt, violent movement and was instantly asleep. I could feel her arm around my back for a long time afterward.

  At least we had no trouble loading our pocket boat in the morning. There was nothing on deck but the pair of us, one dulled swordcane, and as much fish as Lal had managed to smoke in the last two days. Now she ran up the sail while I pushed the boat away from the bank and scrambled hastily aboard, clinging to the mast and her undamaged ankle. Waist-deep is as far as I go voluntarily.

  As you might imagine, I never became comfortable on that tiny, slippery deck, not in the three days that it was all my existence. I dreaded standing up, clung frantically to the mast when I did, and most often moved from one place to another by sliding along on my rump, like a baby. When we tied up and camped on shore, my dreams were an unending procession of nightmares about drowning. The smoked fish was not only dry and tasteless, but gave me gas, so that when I was not merely terrified I was embarrassed, angry, and constantly hungry. Being useless baggage was a new experience for me, very nearly as bewildering and maddening as being on a boat. And still I remember those three days with a wondering affection.

 
Idyllic? Hardly. Whenever my arms were around Lal during that time, it was to keep myself from falling into the Susathi, or to retie her bandage after washing it. If our intimacy was total, it was also enforcedly discreet. We afforded each other such privacy as two people isolated on a twelve-foot bit of driftwood have to give, turning our backs without being asked, somehow making place for solitude. One day passed almost wordlessly, I recall, except when it came my turn to replace Lal at the tiller. (There was a dainty procedure, by the way, invariably unnerving for me, since the rear of the boat was too narrow for us to trade places in safety. It quickly became simpler for Lal to slip into the water to let me by, and then ease herself back aboard, or sometimes hold onto a rope and trail behind for a while, testing her injuries against the river.) Apart from our few words then, the only sounds were birdsong and sometimes a wind ruffling the water. Our boat, built for silence, moved downstream like the shadow of those little sharp winds.

  Yet that same night Lal woke gasping and shouting out of one of her nightmares, which had not happened since we left The Gaff and Slasher. She calmed herself very quickly, but she did not want to go back to sleep, so we talked until nearly dawn, lying close together beside a fire too small to be easily noticed and far too small to warm us.

  What did we talk about: two scarred, skilled, and decidedly aging wanderers in the dark? The past, more than anything, and our childhoods most of all. Lal has two brothers, older and younger, whom she has not seen since she was taken from her home at the age of twelve. I had an older sister, whom I loved very much, more than anyone, and who died because the man she loved was a stupid, careless man who loved no one. He was the first man I ever killed. I was also twelve at the time.