A Glimmer of Guile

by Mary Patterson Thornburg

  All night long, I dreamed of Raym.

  It was four years, almost to the day, since I first saw him. Taso Raym, the most powerful male witch in the land, maybe in the world, and the most mysterious. I'd heard of him for years before that, ever since my father, Cyra the Goldsmith, took me to Katra. She was the only witch he knew, he said, and she could help me sort out my own gift. Katra mentioned Raym that day, casually, as someone she'd learned from a long time ago. She mentioned him again, easily but not often, over the time I lived with her, and until I heard his name from others, spoken with awe and something close to fear, I thought he was someone like Katra herself, a village healer whose accessibility and kindness more or less balanced out his lack of any great guilish skill. My own gift, I knew even then, was of a higher order than Katra's. And, I supposed, than Raym's.

  But when I mentioned him to the miller's wife as my mother's teacher, I saw the woman's eyes widen and her hand disappear behind her apron to make a protective sign. I got curious. And when Lo Keln, a powerful witch from the Ladygate Community, visited Katra one day with a gift of seeds, I listened as the two spoke of Taso Raym in hushed tones. If Keln, not yet deaf or senile, held him in such reverence, he must be more than I'd surmised. After the old woman left, I questioned Katra.

  "Yes," she said, "Raym is a great one. The greatest ever, maybe. In Monsara, at least. They say the Lady of Maltuk's kingdom is stronger--even Raym says she may be--but I would have to see that to believe it. And," she added, while making the sign against evil, "I hope never to be close enough to her to put my belief to the test."

  "But Mother, you told me he lived in a little house in the woods and tended his own garden."

  "That's true. Raym has never belonged to a community. He's his own man. He likes living alone, under his own roof and his own rule."

  "Doesn't he have servants?" I could scarcely believe this. Even we sent our washing out, when we could afford it, to a woman in the village.

  She smiled. "He needs no servants, Vivia. He lives very simply, as simply as we do, and there are those who are glad to do him favors."

  I puzzled over this. I knew we lived simply, even hand to mouth sometimes, and thought it was because Katra was skillful enough only for our own small village. I planned to change this when I was older and wiser in my gift.

  Katra had been my mother and my teacher ever since the day my father left me with her. He had handed over a couple of silver rings to pay for my board until--he said--he'd return for me. He'd never returned. I would repay her kindness someday, I thought, by getting us a place with one of the great princes, where she could spend her old age in comfort.

  I couldn't imagine a man as grand as Raym actually choosing to live the way we lived. "But if Raym..." I began.

  Katra put her hand gently on my arm. "No more questions. I've talked about him enough for now. I'll tell you more when you're older, maybe. Come now and help me sort these seeds the Lady Keln brought us."

  I was sixteen then, old enough to marry if that had been my destiny, a woman grown, in all ways that the world would judge. Katra was probably around thirty-five--growing old, as it seemed to me then, although she was still quick to laugh, she could run like a deer, and often I heard her singing to herself as she mixed medicines or worked in the garden. There'd be plenty of time, I thought, for any more questions I might have about Raym, or about whatever else occurred to me. I was wrong. Scarcely a year later I found myself kneeling beside her cot, bathing her forehead in cool water, and watching her die.

  When she'd become too ill to go out on calls any longer, I went instead, for by that time I was well versed in the cures and small spells that had always served Katra. And, leaving her alone once, I made the long walk to Ladygate to see if Lo Keln might be persuaded to do something.

  When I described what was wrong with Katra, the old woman shook her head. "There's nothing I or anyone can do to save her, child. We all die, sooner or later, the greatest of us and the least." Seeing my tears, she patted me on the cheek. "But I'll give you a potion to ease her pain at the worst times. And another, which you must guard carefully and use only once. You'll know when."

  I supposed then, although I was too sad to give it much thought, that I would come to Keln, to Ladygate, when my mother died. But for two more years I did not.

  On that last day of Katra's life, she slept quite peacefully until sunset, for I'd given her most of what remained of the pain medicine, the juice of poppies as we both knew. But when I lit the rush lamp she woke and asked for a little water. I held the cup to her lips, raised her with my arm until she could drink it, and she took a few swallows. Then she asked me to prop her head up, saying she had something to tell me. Her eyes were clear and very bright.

  "Vivia, I haven't much time left, or much strength, and I want to say two things to you. The first you already know, I hope. You've been a delight to me, a great help and much more. My only regret, when I chose this life for myself, was that I couldn't have a child to share it with me. And when your father brought you here, I had that child at last. We've been mother and daughter for all the days since, and I thank God, who gave me my gift and then gave me you to make up for it." She squeezed my hand.

  "The second thing is this. There's a place in the woods behind this house that I've marked for you. You'll know the mark when you find it. Tomorrow, after I've gone into the Mystery, I want you to look for what I've left you. You'll have to dig a little. When you find the thing, which is something the goldsmith brought on that first day, put it around your neck, under your clothing. After you've seen my body buried, take it to Taso Raym." Quickly, she told me how to find him. "Tell him who you are and that you've come to learn from him, all he taught me and more, for you're able for much more, you know."

  I couldn't speak, and she may have taken my silence for awe. "He'll teach you, Vivia. Even without payment, but I want him to have the payment. Do you understand?"

  I didn't, really, but I said I did and she sighed, satisfied. "Good, then. Now, my daughter, I think it's time for that second vial Keln gave you."

  She was right, I knew. I went to get it for her.

  * * * *

  A week later, following Katra's directions, I found Raym's cottage. It looked exactly as she'd said it would look, little more than a hut but well kept up, roofed with sod, with a stone chimney at the back and a green-painted door facing the east.

  But the man beside the cottage, half-naked and chopping firewood, was obviously not the great wizard Raym but a peasant, a hired laborer maybe, or one of those who were glad, as Katra had said, to do a favor. He was slender, with skin as dark as mine, and wiry hair mostly tied down under a coarse blue cloth. Sweat poured down his body as he swung his axe. He wasn't very tall, but he looked strong.

  I debated whether to step back into the woods without attracting his attention. I was dressed as a boy, but I didn't think my disguise was very effective and it could be dangerous to approach a strange man. I could use guile on him if need be, of course, but Katra had warned me that it might not be a defense against someone very wicked or very stupid. This peasant might be either or both.

  Still, the cottage was obviously the right one. Besides, I was weary and sad, having seen my mother put into the earth only a few days before. Somehow those feelings emerged as anger.

  First of all I was angry at Katra for having died and for having hidden from me the thing I was now wearing under my boy's clothing: an ornate gold pendant hanging on a strong chain and set with a huge purple amethyst. If we'd sold it, the money would have kept her from want for the last two years of her life. I couldn't make myself understand why she'd kept it a secret, and now I would never know.

  It was for Taso Raym, so I was angry with him, too.

  And I was especially angry with this sweaty peasant for standing in my way with his woodpile and his axe, making me unsure of what to do next. I would walk up to him, I decided. As I made this decision, he planted the axe in the chopping block and tu
rned, as if he'd been waiting for me to make up my mind.

  His face was narrow and brown, his eyes black as iron. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand and regarded me for a moment. "How may I serve you, young woman?" he said, politely enough. So much for my disguise.

  "I've come to see Lord Taso Raym." I stuck out my chin. "You'd better tell him I'm here." Belatedly I extended an aura of guile, not fierce enough to frighten him, I thought, but enough to make him do what I'd said.

  He grinned, showing very white teeth with a noticeable space between the two in front.

  I wondered why the great Raym would put up with such an insolent bumpkin.

  "He'd better know who you are and what you want with him, don't you think?"

  I sighed. "My name's Thegan Vivia. I've come to study with him, although I don't see that it's any of your business." I strengthened the flow of guile, hoping to impress upon him how serious I was. It seemed to work. His grin faded.

  And I found myself encircled with a cold, paralyzing force as if I'd been bound in metal bands from head to toe. I tried to move and could not. Couldn't breathe. My own aura of guile vanished like a candle flame in the wind. I would have screamed but I couldn't make a sound.

  "All right," he said. "Here's your first lesson, then. Don't show an opponent your weapons until you know how strongly he's armed. And your second is, it's bad manners to attack without reason, just because you're peeved about something. Don't use your guile to bully people, Vivia."

  The force that held me dissipated. I gasped for breath and took a step backward, trying not to fall down.

  Apparently I'd met Taso Raym.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Now, nearly four years later, waking up on my mattress of branches, I smiled about my night of dreams. Only the last one did I remember clearly. Raym and I were flying across the sky in our own forms, an utter impossibility, above a great expanse of water full of floating chunks of ice.

  I wasn't at all worried, just a little cold and somewhat hungry. When I mentioned this to Raym, he assured me that he'd take care of it. He dived like a cormorant down to the water and in an instant was back with a large fish in his hands. It was the salmon I took to Heart Hall two days ago.

  "But how will we cook it?" I said.

  The dream-Raym shook his head. "Oh, Vivia, I taught you to make fire ages ago. I can't do everything myself, you know. You have to do some of it."

  I had to laugh. He'd taught me a lot, all right, in the two years I was with him. And we parted, if not exactly friends, certainly not enemies either, despite that unpromising first meeting.

  He accepted my apologies graciously and, after he heard what I had to tell him about myself, invited me into his house for tea. Once inside, I took the pendant from under my shirt and gave it to him, explaining that Katra had said it would be ample payment, more than enough. "But," I hastened to say, "I'm a good worker, too. Not just helping with herbs and things, if that's the sort of guile you practice, but regular chores too. I'm not much of a cook, but I can gather wood, and chop it, and clean, and do washing. Whatever you'd want. And I'm quiet and I don't eat much. I wouldn't be any trouble. If you thought I'd be worth teaching, I mean."

  He was holding the pendant, turning it over in his hands. "Where did she get this?" he asked. "Was it a gift? Did she wear it? I don't feel her wearing it." He hadn't been paying a bit of attention to what I was saying.

  So I explained how my father, the goldsmith, gave it to her to take me on as an apprentice when I was twelve, and how she'd never told me about it. "If she had, I'd have found it and sold it when she got sick." I hesitated. "I don't mean that I wouldn't be grateful if you'd take me as a student. But that pendant would have paid for medicine and better food, a lot of things. And I could have done without it, without coming to you. I could have stayed on in our village and been just fine."

  He looked up. "Was she your mother, Vivia?"

  "Not really, of course. But in all the ways that count."

  "That's what I meant," he said. "Tell me about her illness, please. And her death. If you will." His expression was unreadable and he held my eyes in a cold gaze.

  I knew he was using guile, very subtly, willing me to answer. I didn't mind, because that made it easier for me to talk, to go over again the ordeal that had begun a half-year before and had ended only a few nights ago. When I'd finished I felt better somehow, and I felt him release his hold.

  "Thank you," he said. "I want you to believe me now. Nothing you could have done would've changed any of it. Not if you'd sold this or a hundred like it, not if you'd found the Sea Star itself, could you have bargained with what took her life. And if you'd sold this pendant, you'd have taken away whatever comfort it held for her, knowing that you'd have it after her death and would bring it to me. Do you understand me?"

  "Yes," I said. "I think so, now. Thank you, sir."

  When we came into the cottage he'd pulled on a tunic, and now he slipped the pendant into his pocket without another glance. "Good. Then I'll take you as a student. And you'll not be my servant. We'll work together."

  The first work we did, that very evening, was to raise a lean-to of poles and branches fifteen or twenty paces from the house. I thought it was for me, and when it was done I brought my pack out to it.

  But he shook his head. "Take it back. I'm all you've heard I am, Vivia, but with it I'm a man, so you and I won't sleep in the same house. And I'm civil, so I won't put you out here in the woods. Don't worry. I'll be quite happy out here, and if it rains through the roof I can put up a magic shield against it. We'll build something stronger before winter comes."

  I was surprised at his kindness. Given Raym's reputation, I'd expected something like arrogance, and besides it was his house--and more surprised at his delicacy. After all, we were both people of guile and thus not subject to such fleshly weaknesses as beset ordinary mortals, causing them to do one foolish thing after another. Or so I thought at the time.

  I was seventeen, but I'd seen or felt nothing so far to make me regret my single state, and anyway Raym was ancient, in his middle thirties at least. I suppose I was a tiny bit flattered.

  As for the part about the magic shield, I didn't know whether to believe that or not. I'd already noticed that Raym had an odd sense of humor. But I was to discover, over the next two years, that the man I'd taken for a simple woodcutter was able to do things I would never have imagined possible. I also found that my own gift was deeper and stronger than I'd guessed, as I developed skills I'd never have thought of on my own. He taught me to make fire, yes, and illumination without heat, and to move objects with my mind. He taught me the art of illusion--what people call conjuring--and the Small Shift, which is one form of that art.

  I'd known since I was twelve that I could use my guile to influence people's thoughts and feelings. Katra had helped me to draw on that power, for she'd done that as part of her healing. "Moving the mind to work for the body's good," she called it. Now Raym taught me not only how to refine and focus this skill but also how to recognize and resist such guile used against me.

  At first the idea stunned me. Guile used against me? Raym was remarkably patient. "You've been lucky in the witches you've known. But don't be naÏve, Vivia. Surely you know this gift of ours can be used in all ways, not just good ones. Remember the day you came here, the spell I cast over you that day? What would have happened to you if I'd not broken it?"

  "I'd have died," I said promptly. "I couldn't breathe."

  "Yes, you would have died. The body's instinct to breathe is very strong. Someone without guile would've passed out and started to breathe again. If I'd wanted to kill her I'd have had to do it another way. But people like us are more vulnerable than most, because spells like that turn our guile against us. Your own power, prompted by mine, would have been enough to overrule the human wisdom of your body."

  I stared at him. He talked about guile as if it were some natural force, like fire or gravity or the influence of the stars
. And he talked of killing as coolly as he might talk of mending his shirt.

  "Now," he said, "I'm going to send you a small pain in your left elbow. I want you to examine it. You must learn to recognize it for what it is, something sent to your mind by guile, and then projected from within yourself without a physical origin. When you can tell the difference, you can learn to defend yourself against such spells."

  So we went on. In my time with Raym I learned not only the secrets of guile but other things too. To read and write in the old language of scholars, for instance, which no woman I knew of but the Lady Keln at Ladygate could do, and the lore of numbers and the stars that guide all our lives, whether we know it or not, and ways of growing and preparing medicines that even Katra had only touched on. Maybe the most important thing that Raym helped me to learn is that there's never an end to learning. There's always something new, something useful, a reason to keep one's eyes and ears open.

  * * * *

  The day that ended that part of my life began like any other. In a way I'm glad I didn't know it was the last one, for I'd have dreaded it. As it was I didn't have time even to think about what happened until it was over.

  It was spring, six weeks before the solstice. I'd been alone at the cottage for several days while Raym was at the court of Tandak Khori, the ruling prince in our part of the country. The summons had come as a request. The two men respected each other, and Khori was secure enough in his worldly power to treat Raym with the deference he deserved. Still it had been a summons.

  "Come with me, Vivia," Raym had said unexpectedly. "Khori wants me there when his young wife gives birth, but he's only nervous. She'll have no trouble. She'd do as well with a village midwife."