They stopped a few strides away. An ugly-looking pair, even to Logen's eye—short, stocky, rough-featured, dressed in colourless work clothes, patched and stained. They stared nervously at the six strangers, and at their weapons in particular, as though they'd never seen such people or such things before.
Bayaz spoke to them warmly, smiling and waving his arms, pointing out towards the ocean. One nodded, answered, shrugged and pointed down the track. He stepped through a gap in the hedge, off the field and into the road. Or from soft mud to hard mud, at least. He beckoned at them to follow while his companion watched suspiciously from the other side of the bushes.
'He will take us to Cawneil,' said Bayaz.
'To who?' muttered Logen, but the Magus did not answer. He was already striding westward after the farmer.
Heavy dusk under a grim sky, and they trudged through an empty town after their sullen guide. A singularly ill-favoured fellow, Jezal rather thought, but then peasants were rarely beauties in his experience, and he supposed that they were much the same the world over. The streets were dusty and deserted, weedy and scattered with refuse. Many houses were derelict, furry with moss and tangled with creeper. Those few that did show signs of occupation were, in the main, in a slovenly condition.
'It would seem the glory of the past is faded here also,' said Longfoot with some disappointment, 'if indeed there ever was any.'
Bayaz nodded. 'Glory is in short supply these days.'
A wide square opened out from the neglected houses. Ornamental gardens had been planted round the edge by some forgotten gardener, but the lawns were threadbare, the flowerbeds turned to briar-patches, the trees no more than withered claws. Out of this slow decay rose a huge and striking building, or more accurately a jumble of buildings of various confused shapes and styles. Three tall, round, tapering towers sprouted from their midst, joined at their bases but separating higher up. One was broken off before the summit, its roof long fallen in, leaving naked rafters exposed.
'A library…' whispered Logen under his breath.
It scarcely looked like one to Jezal. 'It is?'
'The Great Western Library,' said Bayaz, as they crossed the dilapidated square in the looming shadow of those three crumbling towers. 'Here I took my first hesitant steps along the path of Art. Here my master taught me the First Law. Taught it to me again and again until I could recite it flawlessly in every language known. This was a place of learning, and wonder, and great beauty.'
Longfoot sucked his teeth. 'Time has not been kind to the place.'
'Time is never kind.'
Their guide said a few short words and indicated a tall door covered in flaking green paint. Then he shuffled away, eyeing them all with the deepest suspicion.
'You simply cannot get the help,' observed the First of the Magi as he watched the farmer hurry off, then he raised his staff and struck the door three good knocks. There was a long silence.
'Library?' Jezal heard Ferro asking, evidently unfamiliar with the word.
'For books,' came Logen's voice.
'Books,' she snorted. 'Waste of fucking time.'
Vague sounds echoed from beyond the gate: someone approaching inside, accompanied by an irritated muttering. Now locks clicked and grated and the weathered door squealed open.
A man of an advanced age and a pronounced stoop gazed at them in wonder, an unintelligible curse frozen on his lips, a lighted taper casting a faint glow over one side of his wrinkled face.
'I am Bayaz, the First of the Magi, and I have business with Cawneil.' The servant continued to gawp. Jezal half expected a string of drool to escape from his toothless mouth it was hanging open so wide. Plainly, they did not receive large numbers of visitors.
The one flickering taper was pitifully inadequate to light the lofty hall beyond. Weighty tables sagged under tottering piles of books. Shelves rose up high on every wall, lost in the fusty darkness overhead. Shadows shifted over leather-bound spines of every size and colour, on bundles of loose parchments, on scrolls rolled and carelessly stacked in leaning pyramids. Light sparked and flashed on silver gilt, and gold ornamentation, and dull jewels set into tomes of daunting size. A long staircase, banister highly polished by the passage of countless hands, steps worn down in the centres by the passage of countless feet, curved gracefully down into the midst of this accumulation of ancient knowledge. Dust sat thickly on every surface. One particularly monstrous cobweb became stickily tangled in Jezal's hair as he passed over the threshold, and he flicked and wrestled at it, face wrinkled in distaste.
'The lady of the house,' wheezed the doorman in a strange accent, 'has already taken to her couch.'
'Then wake her,' snapped Bayaz. 'The hour grows dark and I am in haste. We have no time to—'
'Well. Well. Well.' A woman stood upon the steps. 'The hour grows dark indeed, when old lovers come calling at my door.' A deep voice, smooth as syrup. She sauntered down the stairs with exaggerated slowness, one set of long nails trailing on the curving banister. She seemed perhaps of middle age: tall, thin, graceful, a curtain of long black hair falling over half her face.
'Sister. We have urgent matters to discuss.'
'Ah, do we indeed?' The one eye that Jezal could see was large, dark and heavy-lidded, rimmed faintly with sore, tearful pink. Languorously, lazily, almost sleepily it flowed over the group. 'How atrociously tiresome.'
'I am weary, Cawneil, I need none of your games.'
'We all are weary, Bayaz. We all are terribly weary.' She gave a long, theatrical sigh as she finally glided to the foot of the steps and across the uneven floor towards them. 'There was a time when you were willing to play. You would play my games for days at a time, as I recall.'
'That was long ago. Things change.'
Her face twisted with a sudden and unsettling anger. 'Things rot, you mean! But still,' and her voice softened again to a deep whisper, 'we last remnants of the great order of Magi should at least try to remain civil. Come now, my brother, my friend, my sweet, there is no need for undue haste. The day grows late, and there is time for you all to wash away the dirt of the road, discard those stinking rags and dress for dinner. Then we can talk over food, as civilised persons are wont to do. I so rarely have guests to entertain.' She swept past Logen, looking him admiringly up and down. 'And you have brought me such rugged guests.' She lingered on Ferro with her eyes. 'Such exotic guests.' Now she reached up and let a long finger trail across Jezal's cheek. 'Such comely guests!'
Jezal stood, rigid with embarrassment, entirely at a loss as to how to respond to this liberty. At close quarters her black hair was grey at the roots, no doubt heavily dyed. Her smooth skin seemed wrinkled and a touch yellow, no doubt heavily powdered. Her white gown was dirty round the hem, had a noticeable stain on one sleeve. She seemed as old as Bayaz looked, or perhaps older yet.
She peered into the corner where Quai was standing, and frowned. 'What manner of guest this is, I am not sure… but you are welcome all at the Great Western Library. Welcome all…'
Jezal blinked at the looking-glass, his razor hanging from one nerveless hand.
Only a few moments before he had been reflecting on the journey, now that it was finally approaching its end, and congratulating himself on how much he had learned. Tolerance and understanding, courage and self-sacrifice. How he had grown as a man. How much he had changed. Congratulations no longer seemed appropriate. The looking-glass might have been an antique, his reflection in it dark and distorted, but there could be no doubt that his face was a ruin.
The pleasing symmetry was gone forever. His perfect jaw was skewed round sharply to the left, heavier on one side than the other, his noble chin was twisted at a slovenly angle. The scar began on his top lip as no more than a faint line, but it split in two and gouged brutally into the bottom one, dragging it down and giving him the appearance of having a permanent and unsightly leer.
No effort on his part helped. Smiling made it far worse yet, exposing the ugly gaps in his teeth, mo
re suited to a prize-fighter or a bandit than to an officer of the King's Own. The one mercy was that he would very likely die on the return journey, and no one of his old acquaintance would ever see him so horribly disfigured. A meagre consolation indeed.
A single tear plopped down into the basin under his face.
Then he swallowed, and he took a shuddering breath, and he wiped his wet cheek with the back of his forearm. He set his jaw, in its strange new configuration, and he gripped the razor tightly. The damage was done now, and there could be no going back. Perhaps he was an uglier man, but he was a better man too, and at least, as Logen would have said, he was still alive. He gave the razor a flourish and scraped the patchy, straggling hair from his cheeks, from before his ears, from his throat. On his lip, his chin, and around his mouth he left it be. The beard looked well on him, he rather thought, as he rubbed the razor dry. Or it went a meagre way towards hiding his disfigurement, at least.
He pulled on the clothes that had been left for him. A fusty-smelling shirt and breeches of an ancient and absurdly unfashionable design. He almost laughed at his ill-formed reflection when he was finally prepared for dinner. The carefree denizens of the Agriont would hardly have recognised him. He hardly recognised himself.
The evening repast was not all that Jezal might have hoped for at the table of an important historical figure. The silverware was tarnished in the extreme, the plate worn and cracked, the table itself slanted to the point that Jezal was constantly expecting the entire meal to slide off onto the dirty floor. Food was served by the shambling doorman, at no faster pace than he had answered the gate, each dish arriving colder and more congealed than the last. First came a sticky soup of surpassing tastelessness. Next was a piece of fish so overcooked it was little more than ashes, then most recently a slab of meat so undercooked as to be virtually still alive.
Bayaz and Cawneil ate in stony silence, staring at each other down the length of the table in a way which seemed calculated to make everyone uncomfortable. Quai did nothing more than pick at his food, his dark eyes flicking intently between the two elderly Magi. Longfoot stuck into every course with relish, smiling round at the company as though they were all enjoying themselves equally. Logen was holding his fork in his fist, frowning and stabbing clumsily at his plate as if it were a troublesome Shanka, the ballooning sleeves of his ill-fitting doublet trailing occasionally in his food. Jezal had little doubt that Ferro could have used the cutlery with great dexterity had she wished, but she chose instead to eat with her hands, staring aggressively at anyone who met her gaze as if daring them to tell her not to. She had on the same travel-stained clothes she had worn for the past week, and Jezal wondered for a moment if she had been provided with a dress to wear. He nearly choked on his dinner at the notion.
Neither the meal, nor the company, nor the surroundings were quite what Jezal would have chosen, but the fact was that they had largely run out of food a few days before. Rations in that space of time had included a handful of chalky roots dug from the mountainside by Logen, six tiny eggs stolen by Ferro from a high nest, and some berries of indescribable bitterness which Longfoot had plucked from a tree, apparently at random. Jezal would happily have eaten his plate. He frowned as he hacked at the gristly meat on it, wondering if the plate might indeed be a tastier option.
'Is the ship still seaworthy?' growled Bayaz. Everyone looked up. The first words to have been said in quite some time.
Cawneil's dark eye regarded him coldly. 'Do you mean that ship on which Juvens and his brothers sailed to Shabulyan?'
'What other?'
'Then no. It is not seaworthy. It is rotted to green mulch in its old dock. But do not fear. Another was built, and when that rotted also, another after it. The latest rocks on the tides, tethered to the shore, well-coated with weed and barnacle but kept always crewed and victualled. I have not forgotten my promise to our master. I marked well my obligations.'
Bayaz' brows drew angrily down. 'Meaning, I suppose, that I did not?'
'I did not say so. If you hear a reproach it is your own guilt that goads you, not my accusation. I take no sides, you know that. I never have.'
'You speak as though sloth were the greatest of virtues,' muttered the First of the Magi.
'Sometimes it is, if acting means taking part in your squabbles. You forget, Bayaz, that I have seen all this before, more than once, and a wearisome pattern it seems to me. History repeats itself. Brother fights brother. As Juvens fought Glustrod, as Kanedias fought Juvens, so Bayaz struggles with Khalul. Smaller men in a bigger world, but with no less hatred, and no more mercy. Will this sordid rivalry end even as well as the others? Or will it be worse?'
Bayaz snorted. 'Let us not pretend you care, or would drag yourself ten strides from your couch if you did.'
'I do not care. I freely admit it. I was never like you or Khalul, or even like Zacharus or Yulwei. I have no endless ambition, no bottomless arrogance.'
'No, indeed, not you.' Bayaz sucked disgustedly at his gums and tossed his fork clattering down onto his plate. 'Only endless vanity and bottomless idleness.'
'Mine are small vices and small virtues. To see the world recast according to my own great designs has never interested me. I have always been content with the world as it is, and so I am a dwarf among giants.' Her heavy-lidded eyes swept slowly over her guests, one by one. 'And yet dwarves crush no one underfoot.' Jezal coughed as her searching stare fell on him and gave careful attention to his rubbery meat. 'Long is the list of those you have trodden over in pursuit of your ambitions, is it not, my love?'
Bayaz' displeasure began to weigh on Jezal as heavily as a great stone. 'You need not speak in riddles, sister,' growled the old man. 'I would have your meaning.'
'Ah, I forgot. You are a straight talker, and cannot abide deception of any kind. You told me so just after you told me you would never leave me, and just before you left me to find another.'
'That was not my choice. You wrong me, Cawneil.'
'I wrong you?' she hissed, and now her anger pressed hard at Jezal from the other side. 'How, brother? Did you not leave? Did you not find another? Did you not steal from the Maker, first his secrets, then his daughter?' Jezal squirmed and hunched his shoulders, feeling as squeezed as a nut in a vice. 'Tolomei, do you remember her?'
Bayaz' frown grew frostier yet. 'I have made my mistakes, and still pay for them. Not a day passes that I do not think of her.'
'How outrageously noble of you!' sneered Cawneil. 'No doubt she would swoon with gratitude, if she could hear you now! I think on that day too, now and then. The day the Old Time ended. How we gathered outside the House of the Maker, thirsty for vengeance. How we put forth all of our Art and all of our anger, and could not make a scratch upon the gates. How you whispered to Tolomei in the night, begging her to let you in.' She pressed her withered hands to her chest. 'Such tender words you used. Words I never dreamed were in you. Even an old cynic like me was moved. How could an innocent like Tolomei deny you, whether it was her father's gates or her own legs she was opening? And what was her reward, eh, brother, for her sacrifices? For helping you, for trusting you, for loving you? It must have been quite the dramatic scene! The three of you, up on the roof. A foolish young woman, her jealous father, and her secret lover.' She snorted bitter laughter. 'Never a happy formula, but it can rarely have ended quite so badly. Father and daughter both. The long drop to the bridge!'
'Kanedias had no mercy in him,' growled Bayaz, 'even for his own child. Before my eyes he threw his daughter from the roof. We fought, and I cast him down in flames. So was our master avenged.'
'Oh, well done!' Cawneil clapped her hands in mock delight. 'Everyone loves a happy ending! Tell me only one thing more. What was it that made you weep so long for Tolomei, when I could never make you shed a tear? Did you decide you like your women pure, eh, brother?' And she fluttered her eyelashes in an ironical show, one strangely unsettling on that ancient face. 'Innocence? That most fleeting and worthless of virtu
es. One to which I have never laid claim.'
'Perhaps then, sister, the one thing you have never laid?'
'Oh, very good, my old love, very fine. It was always your ready wit that I enjoyed, above all else. Khalul was the more skilful lover, of course, but he never had your passion, nor your daring.' She speared a chunk of meat viciously with her fork. 'Travelling to the edge of the World, at your age? To steal that thing our master forbade? Courage indeed.'
Bayaz sneered his contempt down the table. 'What would you know of courage? You, who have loved no one in all these long years but yourself? Who have risked nothing, and given nothing, and made nothing? You, who have let all the gifts our master gave you rot! Keep your stories in the dust, sister. No one cares, and me least of all.'
The two Magi glared at each other in icy silence, the atmosphere heavy with their seething fury. The feet of Ninefingers' chair squealed gently as he edged it cautiously away from the table. Ferro sat opposite, her face locked in a frown of the deepest suspicion. Malacus Quai had his teeth bared, his fierce eyes fixed on his master. Jezal could only sit and hold his breath, hoping that the incomprehensible argument did not end with anyone on fire. Especially not him.
'Well,' ventured Brother Longfoot, 'I for one would like to thank our host for this excellent meal…' The two old Magi locked him simultaneously with their pitiless gazes. 'Now that we are close… to our final… destination… er…' And the Navigator swallowed and stared down at his plate. 'Never mind.'
Ferro sat naked, one leg drawn up against her chest, picking at a scab on her knee, and frowning.
She frowned at the heavy walls of the room, imagining the great weight of old stone all round her. She remembered frowning at the walls of her cell in Uthman's palace, pulling herself up to look through the tiny window, feeling the sun on her face and dreaming of being free. She remembered the chafing iron on her ankle, and the long thin chain, so much stronger than it had looked. She remembered struggling with it, and chewing on it, and dragging at her foot until the blood ran from her torn skin. She hated walls. For her, they had always been the jaws of a trap.
Before They Are Hanged Page 51