Innkeeper's Song

by Peter S. Beagle

  The other. Not wicked old magician, that other, his master, the one who held him prisoner. Snatches the sun first, now the man-shape, hoho, what can a poor fox do against such power? Hoho, more than he likes, foolish magician. Not even old nothing ever touches man-shape, not once in so much coming and going on its errands in this world. Oh foolish, careless, vain magician, this is no fox to trouble so lightly.

  But this is a fox to sit under Marinesha’s naril tree and think very fast in a very little moment. Sundown at last, still hot as one fox’s plundered heart, no wind at all, not under the tree. I sit watching until the inn’s windows come drifting out at me, bright and hard as snowflakes.

  Chimney dribbles down roof, roof ripples sweetly—sad, sad for nice warm pigeons—eaves wriggle like eyebrows. Crashes, shatterings, screamings inside, fat innkeeper roaring like sheknath looking for lady sheknath. Lightnings raking down the sky straight for magician’s room—it is all in there, in that room, wind and fire and darkness, yesyesyes. Man-shape, too.

  So, fox—fox forever now, unless so quick and so clever—back to that room? Yes, and yet. No time, no time for and yet—but what is this? The little white mad burning one. Lukassa. Away in the wind, beyond the wind, far beyond friends, innkeepers, pet foxes, Lukassa where humans are not to go. Away there in that place, and after a griga’ath that was wicked old magician. Lukassa.

  No concern of mine, no more than magicians’ wars. My business is all with man-shape, all. Let them spit their spells at each other, let them smash each other’s playthings, conjure each other back and forth across this world, that—only let them keep magic hands off what belongs to old nothing and me. Old nothing says, “Find him. Find the thief. Explain to him.” So. Lukassa is Lukassa’s business now.

  And yet.

  Old nothing and I, we have no friends. Agreements, yes—conveniences, yes—friends, no, not possible. Hard enough telling humans apart, never mind feelings, wonderings. Nyateneri, Lukassa—a nice saddlebag, nice warm arms at night, no more. Kiss nose as much as they like, who cares? Not possible.

  “Find,” says old nothing. More crashes, more shrieks, more windows turn to snow. Fat innkeeper’s inn twists and grinds in the earth. People shaken, spilled out into the courtyard, running, fighting, falling down. Up in magician’s room, backed against empty, splintered windowframe. Him, that other. Face says I win, I win, shoulders not so sure. Old nothing: “There. Now.”

  Lukassa is Lukassa’s business.

  Help her, help wicked magician. Never.

  Care for a human, one human, no end to it. Not possible. I am who I am.

  Old nothing: “You are my little finger, my baby toe, my whisker, my wart. Bring me to him, now, quickly. This is he, this is the one whose hunger disturbs my sleep. You shall have back the man-shape, I will lap up his power along with it. I will make him my left hand.”

  Rotten board behind oven again? Stroll in the front way, like a guest, bite Gatti Jinni’s bottom, walk between fat innkeeper’s legs, pause a moment to wet his shoes—who would notice tonight? I start toward the inn. I stop. Old nothing: “What now?” I do not answer.

  “What now, fingernail? Whisker?” So soft old nothing’s voice in me, it might be evening breeze barely stirring my fur. “Is a human more to you than the human shape? Choose then. This is interesting.” Everything interests old nothing when it is awake—everything, and nothing at all.

  At night, just before sleeping, she asks, always, “Fox, fox, what is your name?” I have no name, she has lost her own. Alike that way, a little. Old nothing: “Choose.” I take two steps left, four steps straight up. Left again? Left, yesyes, four steps around a corner, one behind the other. And there. Magicians make such fuss of journeys.

  Same darkness, why imagine any different? Same thin black road under my feet, same bad sky. Dull place, I always forget. I come here sometimes because old nothing never does. Cannot? No knowing. Hard to know things here, too sideways, too slithery. Sit still, fox, sit empty, listen. Never anything to see in this place, anyway. Listen for her.

  I wind the griga’ath first. Smell cold, they do, not hot at all—under the fire, a sweet distant chill, smell of winter drawing near in summer. No mistaking. Ears go back, fur stands up, already on my feet unaware. No fear of gri-ga’aths, never me, only the body. Then I hear Lukassa.

  Different here, around this corner. Time has no meaning, end is just the same as beginning, space is not real. Lukassa and griga’ath—perhaps behind me, perhaps beside, anywhere, underneath even. I might be facing them, never know it. But I hear Lukassa, because I am listening. Where man-shape was, that place hears her.

  One short, small cry—why more, with no help ever, and a griga’ath turning? I answer—fox-bark only, words gone with man-shape. A moment later, just above me in the dark, there, Lukassa, almost lost in the fire-shadow around her. Griga’ath wants to swallow her, make her a living part of its fire. They cannot all do that, but this one can, could devour pretty me if I look away once. So. Fox sits back, very carefully, barks again.

  Lukassa turns. Brown eyes gone gray with haze of being here. Wrong for humans here, wrong as bones being on outside. Cannot see me, not those eyes, cannot see anything but griga’ath. Wicked bloody magician should have told her what happens. Too late, after all.

  But Lukassa: “My fox!” and I do not want this, but two words go through me like cold iron. “My fox!” and she is away from griga’ath and to me, kneeling, reaching across all nowhere to hold me. A calamity, she is, a weeping, laughing confusion of fear, exhaustion, joy, madness, ignorance, love. For this sake I let man-shape go. A favor, pigeons. Come and eat me.

  Griga’ath over us, a blazing white sky of his own. Put me down, idiot Lukassa, but no words, no more. Nothing to do but nip wrist, hard—yelps, lets go, looks hurt, too bad. Back away slowly. Does he know us least little, old magician in there? No. Cold green eyes seeping through flames, he reaches to pick us up, gulp us both down, feed his oven heart. He can do it. If I could still take man-shape, he could still do it.

  One way left. One.

  How long, then? Long, long, long, even wicked magician not yet born last time I walk in my own self. No need, no use, too much trouble, fox will do. And when fox will not do, man-shape will. Now, no help for it. Old nothing would not like this. Old nothing is not here. No help for it.

  Lukassa’s arms around me again, not caring if I snap or no. Trembling, shivering, holding too tight, trying to keep me from griga’ath. A calamity, that girl. I look in her eyes—let go, Lukassa, must not change in your arms, must not, believe me. Friend. My friend. Let me go.

  And she does look straight back at me and let me go, as griga’ath’s hand closes on her. I reach down and in and down, shake my self awake, the deep that is no borrowing, no form, no part of old nothing even. Me. So sorry to disturb, nice nap, I hope. You are needed, me.

  Never any notion of what I look like, but I see the change in Lukassa’s eyes. No cry when griga’ath takes her, no struggle in its hand—but now such terror, such betrayal, almost it would pain, except not possible. So dreadful, Lukassa, truly? Not to see me? No leavings of your fox, even in ancient thing I am? I would know you.

  Griga’ath’s turn to back away, holding Lukassa up between us like a lantern. Deciding—fear, not fear? My turn to reach out, long gray arms and hands I have, a glittering edge to them, ridgy gray fingers bend the air. I say, “Put her down.” My voice a gray crushing. Lukassa covers her ears, her face. I say, “Put her down.”

  A rising in me, a remembering. Water and sky, this world, when I came to be—water and sky and terrible trees and old nothing. Foxes, yes, plenty of foxes, but no humans, so no griga’aths. No magicians, not one, no magicians scuttling here, there, trying to be gods, demons, ordinaries, all together. Creatures like me, there were—other things, too, in the water, in the trees. Fox forgets, man-shape forgets. I remember.

  Griga’ath remembers something. Sets Lukassa down slowly, she looks back and forth, which is m
ore terrible? I say, “Lukassa, to me,” but she cannot bear my voice. I move toward her, reach out, she flitters away, behind me now, good. Griga’ath hisses, grins monsters at us, undecided yet. I speak to it in the First Tongue, fox and man-shape never knew. I say to it, “Behold me and begone. Dry stick, dead leaf, depart to whatever waits for you.” And I turn my back.

  And for me an end of it. No more but to bring Lukassa home to that other world, hers. A skin away from this one, less, a whisper, but no coming and going, only the dead, the mad, the fox. Lukassa is not mad. Old magician’s doing, it would be—fool, fool, how could I not see? Lukassa. Poor one.

  Look back a last time. Griga’ath crouches, not moving, will not attack again. A smaller fire now, under this liquid, shifting dark—instead of griga’ath consuming us, darkness is already drawing it in, drinking it down into itself. And serve you right, wicked magician, waking the dead to adore you. Even for a magician, shameful. What you have become, you always were. Justice for once to leave you here, a pleasure, too.

  But Lukassa will not come.

  Four steps right and around and down, that simple— but she will not. Afraid still, drive her ahead, use fear, no time and no choice. She eludes me, darts this way, that way, stupid-stubborn as a chicken, trying and trying to return to griga’ath. This is madness, what is this? I tell her to stop, come with me, but the voice makes her truly wild, she would hide behind griga’ath if she dared. She says, “I came for him.”

  Always. Always. Any concern with humans, any feeling at all, there you are, telling yourself you do not know what you know. Walk right through you right now, she would—you, griga’ath, no difference, all for one wicked, lost old man. Dead, alive, an idiot, to the bone. And serve you right, idiot fox. Foolish, I clutch at her, carry her off where she belongs, be done with it. She scrambles out of reach—“No, no, I came for him! Fox, where are you? Help me, fox!” Looking at me as she cries.

  Squeeze back into fox-shape to quiet her? But by now I am as stupid as she. Humans do that to you. Once more, no help for it. I turn to griga’ath, speak to it slowly, carefully. “Come along, then. Come with us.” Oh, never again, never again. Old nothing must be hurting itself with laughing.

  “Come with us.” Griga’ath takes a single step. Lukassa gasps her wonder—another step, another gasp. Griga’ath halts, looks at us, eyes like green cinders. Not knowing us, can it know who it is? Can it choose? this world, that? “Come, so, come.” A blue-hot snarl, a step. Lukassa claps hands, sings hope. Never again. “Come, then.”

  ROSSETH

  There is a hole in my memory, just here. I can remember the wind, the tremendous, unbelievable noise, people shrieking in the halls, and The Gaff and Slasher shuddering violently all over, like a terrified horse. I remember holding Lal’s hand, walking with her and Soukyan toward a blackness where a wall had been, a blackness that asked us in very sweetly. It showed us pictures, the blackness. I can’t say now what it showed us, but I was going there gladly. I remember that as well as I remember the griga’ath.

  Then nothing—no, not even nothing, not a hole but a hiccup. The next thing, without the slightest pause, is Karsh shaking me and shouting at the top of his voice. I recognize the words by themselves, but all together they make no sense. I flop back and forth in Karsh’s grip like a dishrag, while beyond him Tikat is screaming, “Lukassa! Lukassa!” at a wall. The other wizard is there, too, watching him with a strange faraway smile widening on his lipless mouth. It is like a dream, and always seems to continue for a long time.

  Soukyan stopped it. He put me behind him, holding Karsh back with one hand on his chest. I remember him saying, his voice so deep and hoarse that Karsh must surely see past any disguise to the truth of him, “Stay there, fat man, where you are.” I understood his words. He said to me, “Rosseth. Are you all right?”

  Before I could reply, if I could have, Karsh was bellowing, “Well, what in bloody hell do you think I’ve been asking him, fool woman?” It gave me a fit of the giggles, I couldn’t help it. Not so much because of what I knew, as because I had never heard Karsh talk that way to a paying guest. Soukyan had to shake me a bit this time. I said, “Yes, all right, it’s all right.” I pulled away from Soukyan and turned to look about me.

  The room was a ruin, window gone, and the door hanging by one hinge—Karsh’s doing, though I didn’t know then. Not that there’s much you can do to ruin a grubby little box like that, kept up mostly for bargemen to sleep off drunks; but the walls were leaning in as though the room had been pinched between some gigantic thumb and forefinger. Half the floor was seared black, warped upward into a sharp ridge by the heat of the griga’ath’s passage. I saw Marinesha’s wildflowers scattered in a far corner. They were unharmed, strangely, except that their vase was broken.

  Lal was with Tikat, trying to calm his endless, heartbreaking calling. Out of the side of my eye, I could see Soukyan moving very slowly toward the wizard, Arshadin. There was death in his face. Arshadin went on smiling at no one, touching his own face and body in a kind of awful wonder. He seemed not to notice anything else at all, but it was Soukyan to whom I wanted to shout warning. But then Karsh was at me again, demanding in the same breath to know if I were truly all right and what the goat-fucking hell I was doing in the damn wizard’s room in the bloody first place. His face was red and pale by turns, and he was trembling rather like a horse himself. I thought it was the inn, the devastation of the only thing in the world he loved. I felt sorry for him.

  Soukyan took the last step before the spring, and I did cry out to him, but Arshadin had already turned. One thick white hand gestured vaguely in Soukyan’s direction, and Soukyan fell to the floor. His mouth was open, but he could not breathe—you could see his eyes bulging, his chest straining, strangling there at Arshadin’s feet. He rolled from side to side, hands tearing at his throat, crazily trying to rip it open to let the air in. Arshadin looked down at him, nodding thoughtfully.

  I started for Arshadin, but Karsh grabbed my arms so hard that I carried black bruises for days. Lal flew across the room like a thrown dagger, golden eyes slitted and cold. Arshadin glanced sideways at her, and she stopped dead still, staring wildly in all directions, half-cowering, half-challenging, throwing up her arms to ward off attackers none of us could see. She plainly recognized no one, not even Soukyan writhing on the floor. This part also goes on forever, but it is not like a dream.

  Arshadin spoke. “It is over,” he said in that light, sexless, dreadfully placid voice. “There is a new master here.” Soukyan interrupted him with a frantic convulsion, first kicking out at Arshadin with all his fading strength, then trying to tangle their legs and drag him down. Arshadin stepped aside, and Soukyan’s effort trailed away into a feeble drumming of his heels, as mine had rattled on the wall when the blue-eyed assassin pinned me there by the throat. I couldn’t stand it. I managed to get an elbow into Karsh’s belly, and he grunted and let go of me. I went for Arshadin again.

  He nodded to Lal, and she spun to intercept me, crouched and glaring. Arshadin pointed down, saying, “Take warning by him—” but he never finished, because it was just then that Lukassa and the griga’ath reappeared.

  They came out of a fold in the air, a swift crumpling and smoothing that I glimpsed only for a moment as it parted for them. Lukassa was first, turning apparently to coax the griga’ath on through, and behind them… behind them in that moment was something I know I could not have seen. It was gray and big, and it saw me, too, and it could not have, and that is all I want to say. In my next breath, the gateway was shut and gone, and Soukyan’s fox was leaping to the floor, where it sat coolly on its haunches and watched Arshadin turn different colors. He made sounds, too, but they weren’t nearly as interesting.

  What happened then happened so fast that I have to talk about it very carefully. Lukassa took two steps forward and collapsed, not into Tikat’s waiting arms, but into mine. She knocked me down, and her head bumped hard against my mouth, cutting my lip and loosenin
g a tooth. The griga’ath shook itself, sneezed, and was the old wizard again—and if you wonder how I could be sure, his first act was to snap two words at Soukyan, who drew in breath for what seemed to me the first time in a hundred years, tried another, and sat up slowly, immediately reaching out to Lal. She pulled him to his feet, and for an instant they held each other. Then they both turned to look for Arshadin.

  He was mad, of course—anyone who must be master is mad—but does that mean that his courage was all madness? I don’t think so, for my part. He faced the old wizard as boldly and contemptuously as ever, saying, “Here we are again, then. Where would you like me to send you next?” But his lips moved stiffly around the words, and his face looked like melting ice.

  The old man looked immensely weary himself, but the smell of death and despair was gone from him. His green eyes were clearer than I had ever seen them, and bright as new leaves, and his laughter was spring water dancing up out of stone. He said, “Never mind about me, my poor Arshadin. Let us consider—and very quickly, too—a far enough place to ship you as you stand here. For nothing is ever over, and those whom you have failed do not understand failure.” Under the laughter, the voice was hard and urgent.

  Lukassa stirred against me. I handed her to Tikat as gently as I could. Our eyes met briefly; then he bent his head and touched her hair. I looked away. Arshadin retorted, “I kept my bargain. If they were too weak to hold you, what shall they do with me? Nothing has changed.”

  Behind me Karsh was muttering, “I’ll kill him. Let me just get my hands on him, I’ll kill him.” I thought he meant Arshadin; that he had realized who was finally responsible for the destruction of The Gaff and Slasher. But he was glowering at the fox, who went on sitting up, observing everything with its tongue lolling and its expression serenely scornful. It turned at his words, and looked at me as it had from Soukyan’s saddlebag that first day, with my true name glimmering and turning far down in its eyes.