Rogues

by George R. R. Martin

  “Go on,” said Antipater. “Two drops on the back of your hand.”

  Kerynis cocked his head. “You’re young and strong. Maybe you should try three drops.”

  I took a deep breath, then carefully poured three drops of the unguent onto my hand. After a final moment of hesitation, I licked it up. The taste was horrible.

  For what seemed a long time, they stared at me in silence. At last I began to feel a warm sensation in the pit of my stomach, spreading to my chest and limbs. My head felt light. The room took on a faint glow.

  Kerynis smiled and nodded. “Ah, it’s beginning to work.”

  Antipater frowned. “I see no change.”

  “Nor will you, as I explained. How do you feel, young Roman?”

  I swallowed. “Strange … but not in a bad way.” I looked at the hand from which I had lapped the drops. “I can still see myself.”

  “Of course you can,” said Kerynis. “It’s the rays of visibility. You see yourself every day, so you’re not susceptible to your own invisibility.” Though I had slowly and quietly risen from my chair and walked across the room, he continued to gaze at the place where I had been sitting.

  “Try it!” whispered Antipater. “Step into the common room and see what happens. I’ll come with you.”

  “No, Teacher, stay here,” I said, looking at the money on the table and the bag of books, and at Kerynis, whom I still didn’t trust.

  “Very well.” Antipater gladly took a seat and began looking through the cylinders.

  Feeling the strange effects of the potion, I ventured into the common room. A dozen or so patrons were scattered about the small tavern, drinking wine and gambling. I walked from one side of the room to the other, treading as silently as I could. To be sure, no one seemed to see me. I conducted a few simple experiments, such as clapping my hands in front of a drunken stranger’s face, only to see him start back in surprise.

  Galatea passed by, carrying a pitcher full of wine. I walked alongside her, openly staring at her lovely face and golden hair and at the upper portion of her white breasts, which were suggestively framed by the bosom of her dress. Oh, to have lived a century before, in the days of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, when the Cretan revival was in vogue and women wore garments that exposed their breasts completely!

  I followed her on her rounds, and watched her flirt shamelessly with every man in the establishment. Feeling an irrational stab of jealously, I couldn’t resist putting my lips close to her ear and whispering, “Boo!”

  The poor girl gave such a start that she sloshed wine from the pitcher all over the front of her dress. Some of the wine landed on her breasts. The men who witnessed her apparent clumsiness hooted and laughed. One of them shouted, “Here, Galatea, let me lick that off for you!”

  I saw her blush and felt a bit ashamed of myself. But when she turned and hurried down a narrow hallway, I followed. As she stepped into a little room, I slipped behind her and barely avoided being struck by the door.

  The cluttered, windowless little room was dimly lit by a single lamp. It was apparently the room where she slept, for there was a narrow bed, a chair, and an open trunk full of clothes and other items. While I stood very still and watched, Galatea pulled the wine-spattered dress over her head and stood before me completely naked.

  It had been a while since I had seen a naked woman. Through the winter months, while we stayed on Rhodes, I had enjoyed the intimate companionship of Vindovix the Gaul, but that was not the same thing. Unafraid of being seen, I openly stared. This way and that she turned in the amber light, so that I had a view of her from every angle. Galatea was like a statue of Venus, endowed with sleek white limbs, enticing hips and buttocks, and breasts that changed from one shape to another as she stooped, turned, and stood, each shape more provocative than the last.

  When she pulled another dress from the trunk, I couldn’t contain my groan of disappointment.

  Galatea whirled about and looked directly at me. “Is someone there?’

  I held my breath.

  She frowned, then went on about her business, turning her back to me as she pulled the new dress over her head. But by the time she turned to face me again, the potion of invisibility seemed to have waned, for she started back and raised her arms as if to defend herself.

  “What are you—? How did you—?” She seemed at a loss for words, as any girl would be if a man suddenly materialized from nowhere in a closed room.

  I, too, was speechless, but only for a moment. “I think it was my fault that you spilled the wine,” I finally said.

  She frowned. “Don’t be silly. I was clumsy, that’s all. But where did you come from?”

  “Does that matter?”

  Galatea cracked a smile. “Ah, yes, I recognize you now. You’re the young Roman traveling with the old man. I … couldn’t quite see you at first. It must be the dim light. Even so … how did you … ?”

  “I’m sorry you spilled the wine.”

  “The dress is ruined,” She sighed.

  “I’ll buy you another.”

  “That’s very sweet of you. But I must get back to work now, or else those drunken louts will climb over the counter and start serving themselves.” She moved toward the door, sidling past me so close that we touched, front to front. From that brief, brushing contact, I think she must have perceived the effect she had on me, for she glanced downward, then flashed a knowing smile and gave me a quick kiss on the lips before she pushed the door open and left me standing alone in the little room.

  By the time I returned to the private dining room, Antipater and Kerynis had settled their transaction. The coins were no longer in sight, and the satchel full of scrolls was on the floor beside Antipater.

  “How did it go?” said Kerynis.

  “Yes, Gordianus, did you do something naughty?” I must have blushed, for Antipater laughed and shook his head. “By Hercules, I think you did do something naughty.”

  Kerynis also seemed richly amused and took advantage of my consternation to give me a swat on the backside. After a few words of farewell, he was gone, leaving the books and taking the shekels with him.

  That night, in our room, long after midnight, Antipater pored over his newly acquired scrolls, refilling the lamps with oil whenever they burned low. Occasionally he muttered to himself or uttered an exclamation of amazement. “Imagine that!” he would say, or “Astonishing! Can such a thing be possible?”

  While Antipater read, I could think of nothing except Galatea. I lay on my narrow bed, wearing only my loincloth and covered by a sheet. From the open window came the sounds of the waterfront at night—waves gently lapping the piers, and the quiet creaking of ships—but these did nothing to calm me. My eyes were shut but I was fully awake. An idea occurred to me.

  “Teacher, what became of the vial?”

  “The what?”

  “The vial with the potion.”

  “It’s here in the satchel, along with the scrolls. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason.”

  He turned his gaze from the scroll in his lap and looked at me sidelong. “Do you have some need to be invisible tonight?”

  “Of course not!”

  He hummed skeptically, then returned his full attention to the scroll.

  I tossed and turned. Sleep would not come.

  In my imagination, I was certain that Galatea slept in the nude, without even a sheet to cover her. Try as I might, I could think of nothing else.

  At some point the room grew dim, as the lamps burned low and Antipater did not refill them. He nodded, and his grip loosened, so that the scroll on his lap unfurled and rolled down his legs and onto the floor. Antipater began to snore.

  Very quietly I rose from the bed. I started to put on my tunic, then realized I had no need for it. Nor did I need the loincloth I was wearing. An invisible man had no need for clothes! With the thrill that only a nineteen-year-old can feel at simply being naked, I stripped off the loincloth and luxuriated in the cool sea
breeze from the window.

  Moving stealthily, I found the vial, unstoppered it, and ingested a few drops. Moments later, I felt it take effect.

  Downstairs, all was quiet. The empty common room was closed for the night. In the darkness I navigated the narrow hallway to Galatea’s room.

  The door was not locked. Very quietly, I unlatched the handle, pushed the door open, and stepped inside.

  A small lamp set atop the trunk burned very low. I had been wrong about at least one thing: Galatea slept with a sheet over her. No glimmer of flesh was revealed by the lamp’s slanting amber glow, only a jumbled linen landscape of ridges and shadows

  Next to the lamp, something shone brightly. It was a silver coin. Drawn by its glitter, I leaned over the trunk and took a closer look.

  It was a shekel of Tyre, but not just any shekel. The profile of Melkart had no nose.

  What were the chances that I should see not one, but two of these rare coins in a single day?

  I took a closer look. Almost certainly, this was the very coin that Kerynis had shown me. How had Galatea come to have it—unless Kerynis had given it to her? And why would any man give a silver coin of such value to a mere serving girl—unless she had performed a service far more valuable than pouring wine?

  To how many others in the tavern that night had Kerynis paid a silver shekel, in return for their flawless performances? He could have given a shekel to every man there and still have plenty left over.

  I heard a sleepy sigh. I turned and stood at the foot of the bed. Suddenly angry at having been made a fool, I clutched the nearest corner of the sheet and yanked it from the bed.

  I had been right about one thing: Galatea slept in the nude. The play of the soft amber light across her recumbent form sent a stab of longing through me despite my anger.

  But she was not alone.

  Next to her was Kerynis, equally naked. The two of them stirred, sleepily clutching for the sheet that had been so rudely taken from them.

  A new thought occurred to me, running counter to the first: what if Kerynis had paid Galatea the shekel for the pleasure of her company, and not for going along with the pretense that two traveling fools were temporarily invisible? If that were true, my flash of anger was unjustified, and the potion did work—in which case, neither of them could see me standing before them, completely naked.

  An instant later, I was disabused of this notion by Kerynis himself. Groggy from wine and who could say what other pleasures, he scooted to one side of the bed and managed to make a bit of room between himself and Galatea, then patted the empty spot.

  “Come to join us, you studly Roman? The three of us can reenact the amorous encounter of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and Queen Laodice!”

  Galatea laughed, looked at me through narrow eyes, and flashed a sleepy smile. She joined Kerynis in patting the empty spot.

  The two of them could see me, after all.

  “But Teacher, I don’t understand why you’re won’t take legal action. Doesn’t Tyre have magistrates? Call the scoundrel into a court of law and demand that he return the money to you in exchange for all these worthless books!”

  The first light of morning had been seeping from the open window when I woke Antipater and told him what I had discovered. Now bright, slanting sunlight shone on the masts in the harbor, and still we were arguing.

  “No, no, Gordianus. I won’t do it. The money is his now, and the books are mine, and that’s the end of it.”

  “It’s not right,” I said. “You were taken advantage of. He made fools of us both.”

  Antipater raised a snowy brow. “Is it seemly, to call your old tutor a fool?”

  “That’s not what I mean, and you know it.” I paced the room. “Whenever I think of it, my face burns hot.”

  “Think of what?”

  “How they must all have been laughing at us, behind our backs. That whole roomful of men, paid off by Kerynis to go along with his charade. We thought we were fooling them, walking around invisible, but they were fooling us! Because they could see us the whole time!”

  “Consider the acting skills required for such a performance,” said Antipater thoughtfully. “It’s quite remarkable that none of them burst into laughter.”

  “Well, I’m sure they’re laughing at us now. And they’ll laugh every time they tell the story. When I think of it—”

  “Then my advice, Gordianus, is that you do not think of it.”

  I drew a sharp breath. “If I could have stolen the money back from Kerynis, I would have. But I had no weapon on me …” The fact that I had not even had clothes, much less a weapon, when I encountered Kerynis, I had not revealed to Antipater. It seemed best to leave out certain details of my nocturnal encounter.

  “But there was no theft in the first place, Gordianus. What law was broken?”

  “Kerynis defrauded you!”

  “About the potion, yes. But I wasn’t paying him for the potion; I was paying him for the Books of Secret Wisdom.”

  “And what makes you think those aren’t frauds as well? Useless forgeries, utter gibberish—”

  “Because last night I had the chance to closely examine them. I have no doubt: these are indeed the Books of Secret Wisdom spoken of in the legends of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.”

  “But the invisibility potion was useless. We both felt a little giddy, but it didn’t make us invisible.”

  “True, that batch of potion was useless; but it does not follow that the recipe itself is useless. Kerynis was at fault, not the scroll. The fellow was probably too lazy to go searching for all the proper ingredients to make a genuine batch. For one thing, I think he’s mistaken when it comes to identifying this so-called chameleon herb. I suspect it’s a plant not native to these parts at all—and it may take quite a bit of further research to determine exactly what plant the text refers to.”

  “But Teacher, what makes you think these Books of Secret Wisdom are any less fraudulent than the man who sold them to you?”

  For a moment Antipater appeared to be taken aback, then he gave me a stony look. “I believe in the Books of Secret Wisdom, Gordianus, because I believe in the legends, and the legends affirm that the magic in these scrolls does exist—if we can but interpret their wisdom correctly.”

  I took a deep breath. There was no arguing with a man’s faith in the legends of his childhood.

  “So, Gordianus—where is our friend Kerynis now?”

  “He left the tavern at first light, taking his loot with him. But we could still track him down—”

  “No, no, no!” Antipater was adamant. “I am glad that you happened to encounter him and that you got the truth out of him, about the useless potion. I trust that neither of you was harmed during the interchange? You didn’t come to blows?”

  “No. No violence, no physical contact … of that sort.”

  He responded to this ambiguous addendum with a blank look but let it pass. “And I’m sorry that you had to face such a disappointment when you went to the girl’s room. Not only did you realize that she had taken part in deceiving us, but you discovered her in the arms of another man. Alas! Another had plucked the fruit before you. I take it that Kerynis turned tail and ran at once after you got the truth out of him?”

  I shifted uneasily from foot to foot. “Not exactly.”

  “Ah. So you extracted the truth from him, then left him there, in bed with the girl?”

  “No, I saw him get dressed and leave the room. Eventually.”

  Antipater frowned. “I can’t be sure when I fell asleep, but I’ve been thinking you went to the girl’s room shortly before dawn, and returned very shortly thereafter, at first light. Or … did you go to her room earlier than that? Just how long were the three of you in that girl’s room—and what kept you so long?” He watched me fidget and raised an eyebrow. “Well, never mind. It’s none of my business. Just as my acquisition of these books, and the price I paid for them, is none of yours. Agreed?”

  After a lon
g pause, I nodded. “Agreed.”

  “Then we shall never speak of it again.”

  That day we hired a small team of mules and made other arrangements for the next leg of our journey, and the day after that we left Tyre and headed for Babylon.

  As the mules carried us up the well-worn road toward the Lebanon Mountains, we were both quiet and pensive. How, I wondered, could a man like Antipater, ordinarily so wise, have been such a fool as to let himself be deceived by the likes of Kerynis? And why was he so certain of the value of the Books of Secret Wisdom, which had turned out to be useless? This lapse in prudence had something to do with returning to his hometown, I thought. Half-forgotten dreams of boyhood heroes had stirred the naive child inside him and laid waste to his hard-earned wisdom.

  As for any lapse in judgment on my part, I could only plead that I was nineteen and susceptible to persuasion, far from home and in the midst of a long journey. The places I visited and the people I met continually surprised me, and I continually surprised myself.

  At last, Antipater spoke. “On our first night in the Murex Shell, Gordianus, you remarked that nowhere else in our travels have you encountered the legends of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and you asked why that was so. I have given that question considerable thought. Why have two figures of such remarkable interest been so scanted by the annalists and historians, so overlooked by philosophers, poets, and priests? I think it may be that they were, to put it bluntly, too disreputable. They were too stubbornly independent to give allegiance to a single city and thus become subject matter for a civic epic. They were too often involved with demons and sorcerers to appeal to the staid philosopher and too shifty to please the sober historian. In short, they were rogues, and rogues have no place in the lists of kings and demigods and heroes. It may be that no poet shall ever write of them, alas!”

  For a long while we were both quiet, as the road grew steeper and the mules trudged onward.

  “I wonder …”

  “Yes, Gordianus?”

  “Do you think that someday a poet will write of our adventures, Teacher?”